Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von...

208
1 Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van by Nikos Stavlas A Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in Music (Performance Pathway) Department of Music Goldsmiths, University of London June 2012

Transcript of Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von...

Page 1: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

1

Reconstructing Beethoven:

Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van

by Nikos Stavlas

A Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in Music

(Performance Pathway)

Department of Music

Goldsmiths, University of London

June 2012

Page 2: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

2

I, Nikos Stavlas, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated.

Signed: Date:

Page 3: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

3

Abstract

The subject of this dissertation is Ludwig van, Mauricio Kagel’s tribute to Beethoven on

the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the latter’s birth, which consists of three

separate, but closely related, versions: a film, a musical score and a recording. The main

aim of this project is to analyse the performance problems that musicians have to face

when realising the score Ludwig van, which is an entirely indeterminate collage of

Beethoven’s music, and to suggest ways of tackling them. For this purpose, all three

versions of the work are studied in this thesis. The film is examined in terms of the

issues it raises concerning Beethoven’s reception and of the function of its music, which

consists of unusual performances of Beethoven’s works. The score is analysed from the

perspective of postmodern theory and 20th-century art movements, while the roles of the

composer and the performer are discussed and redefined. The recording is studied as a

sample of how Kagel himself chose to realise his own score. Finally, the difficulties I

encountered in my own attempts to realise Ludwig van are discussed, and the ways in

which I dealt with them are presented. The conclusion at which this dissertation arrives

is that, in works of such indeterminacy as Ludwig van, the performers are required to

step outside their conventional role and act partly as composers. Compared to works

that are considered challenging to the performer in the conventional sense, of requiring

technical virtuosity, this work presents a more fundamental challenge, which has to do

with overcoming personal boundaries: it asks the performer not to execute a pre-

composed work, but to create their own version of Ludwig van. Since very little has

been written about Ludwig van by performers with an academic background, this thesis

can offer valuable assistance to prospective performers of the work in their attempt to

balance between the highly charged conceptual aspect of the composition and the

practical need to achieve its successful performance.

Page 4: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

4

Table of Contents

Abstract .............................................................................................................................3 List of illustrations and other material ..............................................................................6 Acknowledgements ...........................................................................................................7 Introduction .......................................................................................................................8

1. Preface.......................................................................................................................8 2. Structure of the thesis..............................................................................................10

Chapter I: A presentation of primary sources and literature review ...............................12

1. Primary sources.......................................................................................................13 2. Secondary sources...................................................................................................16

Chapter II: Ludwig van in context...................................................................................21

1. Historico-social context � attitude towards tradition..............................................22 A. The anti-authoritarian movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its impact on avant-garde composers............................................................................................22 B. Beethoven as bourgeois symbol and as revolutionary – the Beethoven year 1970.................................................................................................................................25 C. Kagel’s political views and his attitude towards tradition .................................30

2. Experimental music and its performance................................................................35 A. Definitions..........................................................................................................35 B. Performance of indeterminate music..................................................................39 C. Kagel and experimentalism ................................................................................43

Chapter III: Ludwig van: Ein Bericht..............................................................................46

1. “Plot” of the film – Musical materials ....................................................................47 2. The music of the film ..............................................................................................62

A. Manipulation of Beethoven’s works ..................................................................62 B. Role of the music in the film ..............................................................................66

3. Issues raised by the film..........................................................................................69 A. Musealisation – Commercialisation ...................................................................70 B. National identity – Politics .................................................................................75 C. Beethoven and performers..................................................................................79 D. Scholarship on Beethoven..................................................................................82 E. Beyond Beethoven’s myth – Distance................................................................85

4. Reception of the film...............................................................................................87 Chapter IV: Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven.......................................................89

1. The score .................................................................................................................90 A. List of fragments of Beethoven’s music used in the score of Ludwig van.........93 B. Kagel’s instructions ............................................................................................97

2. Ludwig van as a postmodern composition ............................................................100 A. Intertextuality ...................................................................................................101 B. The death of the composer ...............................................................................103 C. Deconstructing hierarchies, deconstructing Beethoven ...................................105 D. Collage vs. compositional control: Björn Heile’s view ...................................108 E. Jonathan Kramer’s conception of postmodern music.......................................110

Page 5: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

5

3. Comparison to artists and art movements of its time............................................113 A. Experimentalism...............................................................................................113 B. Fluxus, Conceptual Art.....................................................................................115 C. Borges...............................................................................................................117

4. Kagel’s recording of Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven...............................119 A. Kagel’s notes ....................................................................................................120 B. Structure of the recording, list of quotations from Beethoven’s works ...........124 C. Notes on the recording......................................................................................127

5. Other realisations of Ludwig van ..........................................................................132 A. Realisations by Kagel.......................................................................................132 B. Realisations by others.......................................................................................135 C. Alexandre Tharaud’s recording........................................................................137

6. Discussion of performance problems....................................................................140 Chapter V: Realising Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven ......................................145

1. May 2009 realisation.............................................................................................146 A. Preparation .......................................................................................................146 B. Structure ...........................................................................................................149 C. Performance evaluation ....................................................................................160 D. Conclusions ......................................................................................................163

2. June 2011 realisation.............................................................................................165 A. General aims.....................................................................................................165 B. Structure - staging.............................................................................................169 C. Performance evaluation ....................................................................................180

Conclusions ...................................................................................................................183 Bibliography..................................................................................................................186 Appendix I: May 2009 realisation programme .............................................................197 Appendix II: June 2011 realisation programme............................................................200 Appendix III: June 2011 realisation texts .....................................................................205

Page 6: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

6

List of illustrations and other material

Page 92: Example 1, extract from the score of Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven

Page 127: Example 2, extract from Kagel’s editing plan for his recording of Ludwig van

Page 151: Example 3, extract from my realisation of Ludwig van in 2009, section ii

Page 154: Example 4, extract from my realisation of Ludwig van in 2009, section v

Page 156: Example 5, extract from my realisation of Ludwig van in 2009, section vi

Page 174: Example 6, extract from my realisation of Ludwig van in 2011, section iv

Page 175: Example 7, extract from my realisation of Ludwig van in 2011, section v

Page 178: Example 8, extract from my realisation of Ludwig van in 2011, section ix

Back cover: DVD of my realisations of Ludwig van in May 2009 and June 2011

Page 7: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

7

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to:

My supervisor Keith Potter, for his invaluable help, his constant support, his insight and his devotion throughout these years

My piano teachers Andrew Zolinsky, Elina Grammatopoulou and Lola Totsiou,

for helping me find my voice The Greek State Scholarship Foundation, for supporting my studies Matthias Kassel and the rest of the staff at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel

for being extremely helpful and efficient Joan Atherton and Bruno Canino, for sharing their experiences from their

collaboration with Kagel Jenny Bredull, for the most exciting German lessons and her help with the

translations up to the last minute Sophia Karakantza, for having been the right person at the right time, and for

still being there My family, for their silent approval and their loud encouragement Andriana, for inspiring me, saving me, and for having all the answers Michalis, for his reassuring presence, his devotion, and for still asking questions My talented and inspiring friends and colleagues Angelina, AnnaMaria,

Artemis, Barbara, Beatrix, Ben, Ella, Erik, Isobel, Jessica, Kate, Kristin, Manolis, Maral, Polly, Rosamund, Sofi, for offering me their precious time and creativity in order to make Ludwig van happen

Page 8: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

8

Introduction

1. Preface

The subject of this dissertation is Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van, a work that exists in

three separate and distinct forms: a film, a musical score and a recording. The film,

whose full title is Ludwig van: Ein Bericht (1969), commissioned by the German WDR

(Westdeutscher Rundfunk) on the occasion of the celebration of Beethoven’s 200th

anniversary, is a controversial commentary on Beethoven’s reception rather than on the

composer himself or his music, which reportedly shocked and even offended audiences

of its time. The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by

Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works, to which Kagel has not added a

single note of his own, and which leaves its performers the freedom to manipulate the

material at their own will. Finally, the recording of Ludwig van on Deutsche

Grammophon (also 1970) reflects the way in which Kagel chose to realise the score. My

final aim is to discuss the performance issues that Ludwig van poses and to show how I

tackled these problems in performing my first realisation of it in May 2009, as part of

my upgrade assessment, and in planning my final realisation in June 2011.

There are three main reasons for which I have decided to embark on such a task.

The first is that I have always been fascinated by music of the 20th and 21st centuries

which deals with the Western classical tradition and the canon; although I do believe in

faithfulness to the text and the composer when performing canonic works, I also believe

that we can discover new things about old music and make it more relevant to us by

incorporating it in contemporary musical language and by interacting with it. The

second reason is that as a performer I feel especially challenged by works that question

the boundaries between the role of the composer and that of the performer; asking the

latter to take an active part in the conception of music rather than only in its execution

makes them step out of their comfort zone, and, in my opinion, this can help them

reconsider and reassess their own relationship with music. The third reason is also

relevant to this challenge: as Ludwig van is a composition in the shaping of which the

main role is played by the performer, I feel that, being a performer myself, I am suitable

to study Ludwig van and its performance issues. I believe that there is not much

Page 9: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

9

literature on contemporary music written from the point of view of the performer, so a

study of a work of such an open form and the experience of realising it is certainly

useful to musicological research.

Page 10: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

10

2. Structure of the thesis

The first chapter of this dissertation will have two functions: to present the primary

sources which are the subject of my research and to review the secondary sources on

this subject. Therefore, in its first section I will give a brief description of the film, the

score and the recording, and I will also mention the other primary sources used, such as

Kagel’s notebooks and the film’s script. In the second section of this chapter I will

present and give a brief discussion of the most important secondary sources I will use

for each of the issues I am going to address in this dissertation.

The second chapter will be an attempt to put Ludwig van into context. In its first

section I am going to present the historico-social conditions of the time in which

Ludwig van was created and discuss how composers of that time, including Kagel, were

influenced by these conditions. In its second section I will provide some definitions

from the field of experimental music, in which I believe that Ludwig van belongs, and I

will discuss some of the performance issues that this music poses, as well as Kagel’s

attitude towards it.

The main part of this dissertation will start at the third chapter, where I will

concentrate on the film Ludwig van. At the beginning I will give a brief description of

each of its sequences and the music heard in each of them, all of which is by Beethoven,

but performed or orchestrated in unusual ways. In the second section I will discuss the

ways in which Kagel manipulated Beethoven’s music for the purposes of the film, and

the role the music plays in Ludwig van. Later on, I will examine the issues that Kagel

addresses with his film: Beethoven’s musealisation, his misuse for political reasons, the

problems of performance of his works, the vast amount of academic study on

Beethoven. Finally, I will provide a short section on the film’s reception, based on

reviews in West and East German newspapers.

The fourth chapter will be concerned with the musical composition Ludwig van

and its performances. After identifying the Beethoven works that feature in Kagel’s

collage and discussing his instructions for the performance of the score, I will examine

Ludwig van in the light of postmodern theory, and I will show the postmodern elements

it exhibits. Then I will compare Ludwig van to art movements of its time, and try and

Page 11: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

11

discover whether it can be considered part of them. Later on, I will analyse Kagel’s own

recording of Ludwig van and investigate how faithful he was to his own composition, in

other words whether his recording could be considered as a performance of his score, or

a different work entirely. I will also discuss other live and recorded realisations of

Ludwig van by Kagel and others. Finally, in the last section I will discuss the

performance issues which, in my opinion, Ludwig van poses, and I will provide my

views on how they should be tackled.

The fifth and last chapter of this essay will be about my own attempts at

realising Ludwig van. In its first section I will describe the preparation and the

performance of my first realisation, which took place in May 2009 as part of my

upgrade assessment, and I will discuss its outcome and the conclusions I have drawn

from it. In the second section I will discuss my second and final realisation, of June

2011; I will present the decisions I took based on the outcome of the first one, the

structure I generated and a general evaluation of the realisation and its performance.

Page 12: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

12

Chapter I

A presentation of primary sources and literature review

In this chapter I am going to identify and evaluate the most important sources that I will

employ in writing my dissertation on Kagel’s Ludwig van. Firstly, I am going to present

my primary sources, which are the film Ludwig van: Ein Bericht (Köln, 1969), the

musical score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (London, 1970) and Kagel’s

recording of the music on Deutsche Grammophon (LP 2530014, 1970), as well as a

number of documents that have to do with the making of Ludwig van, all accessed at the

Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Following that, I will name the secondary sources I

am planning to explore for each issue addressed, and comment on the ones that I

consider as most important and helpful.

Page 13: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

13

1. Primary sources

Kagel’s film, Ludwig van: Ein Bericht (Ludwig van: A Report), was made in 1969 for

the bicentenary of Beethoven’s birth in 1970. In the first part it pictures Beethoven

(never fully shown, as he is supposed to be behind the camera and, therefore, the

spectator experiences the film through his own eyes) arriving in Bonn in 1969, strolling

around the city and visiting his birthplace, a fake “Beethovenhaus” designed by

renowned artists of the time. The second part consists of several unrelated scenes, such

as a talk show on whether Beethoven is “misused”, an interview with someone who

claims to be his “only” descendant and a scientific experiment on a pianist playing his

Piano Sonata, op.31 no.2 (Tempest). There are several issues dealt with in this film,

which is concerned much more with the perception and reception of Beethoven in the

20th-century world than with Beethoven himself. Such issues include the

commercialisation of Beethoven’s image and his works; the myth around Beethoven

and the concern about everything around him, such as his personal life and his “external

appearance”; the misuse of Beethoven for political or nationalistic reasons; the anxiety

of modern performers towards Beethoven’s masterpieces; and the problem of the so-

called “historically informed performance”.

The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (Ludwig van: Homage by

Beethoven), was made in a rather unorthodox way. In order to construct the music room

in the Beethovenhaus for the purposes of the film, Kagel had covered everything in that

room with random pages from Beethoven’s music. The score is nothing else but forty-

five photographs (mostly close-ups) taken from different parts of the room, rendering

the score an artwork in its own right. The instructions given for the performance of

Ludwig van leave the performers extremely free: pages can be read in any order, or they

can even be omitted; the instrumentation and duration are to be decided by the

performers; and any piece of Beethoven’s music that does not appear in the score can be

employed at the performers’ will. What is also worth mentioning is an interview Kagel

gave to Karl Faust about the score, which is included in its introduction (Kagel, 1970:

VIII-IX); in this Kagel explains the concept behind Ludwig van and gives us some clues

as to how he worked on his own recording of it.

Page 14: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

14

In the recording Kagel used two male voices, two pianos, two violins, a viola

and a cello. He also employed some studio techniques of editing the recorded material

and included some “rehearsal” dialogues between the musicians. The most striking

thing about the recording is that Kagel does not seem to have used his own score at all,

since the extracts he chose to draw from Beethoven’s music in it are totally different

from the ones in the photographs in the score. It seems that, although Ludwig van:

Hommage von Beethoven is an indeterminate composition, Kagel chose to be in control

of the aesthetic result of his own recording rather than leave it to chance. In fact, he

claims that he based its form on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, op.120. It is

interesting that, although there are many fragments that are recognisably Beethoven’s in

the recording, the overall result sounds like genuinely avant-garde music, making the

work seem to be “a contribution by Beethoven to contemporary music” (Kagel, 1970:

VIII), as Kagel himself puts it.

The other primary sources used for this dissertation were all found at the

Mauricio Kagel archive of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, and most of them

concern the film. Four copies of its script are held in the archive, some of which contain

handwritten notes by Kagel himself. For most sequences, he gives a very detailed

account of all the props used, the camera placement, even the impression he wants to

create. It is worth mentioning that there are some sequences in the script which were not

included in the film, and they give a further idea of Kagel’s purposes in making Ludwig

van: for example, in one sequence there is a text about Beethoven’s food habits, and his

intolerance of servants who would not cook properly; in another, the text Kagel

intended to use was from Editha and Richard Sterba’s Beethoven and his nephew, in

which the psychoanalyst couple tried to prove that Beethoven was a suppressed

homosexual. There is also a documentary on the making of the film by Wilhelm J.

Flues, some of the footage of which was actually used in one of the sequences of the

film itself (“Internationaler Frühschoppen” sequence). In the archive there are also lists

of Beethoven’s compositions used for the music of the film, as well as some audio

tracks from the recording of this music. Finally, there are a number of miscellaneous

documents from Kagel’s collection, which must have been sources of inspiration for the

film: a comic strip about Beethoven from Peanuts by Charles Schulz, an article about an

exhibition of one hundred and seventy Beethoven busts in Bonn, a brochure about a

train travelling from Frankfurt to Amsterdam via Bonn – a journey similar to the one

Page 15: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

15

Beethoven undertakes at the beginning of the film – the name of which was actually

“Van Beethoven”, and others.

In the Sacher archive there is also some material concerning Kagel’s realisations

of the composition Ludwig van. The most important document to be found in the

archive is Kagel’s notebook about his recording of the work. In this, Kagel has written

some of his thoughts on what he wanted to achieve through the recording, some of his

ideas on how he would manipulate his material, and lists of the Beethoven works he

would use, as well as his editing plan. There are also letters between Kagel and various

performers, regarding both the recording and other realisations of Ludwig van: most

importantly a letter to Walter Rosenberg at the Goethe Institute in Buenos Aires, where

he gives some general advice on a realisation of the work there. Finally, there are some

reviews of Kagel’s realisations of Ludwig van in concerts in Köln and London.

Page 16: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

16

2. Secondary sources

There are a number of books and articles on Kagel’s work in general, most of which are

in German,1 a few in French and less in English. One of the most important books is

Björn Heile’s The Music of Mauricio Kagel (Heile, 2006), the first book on Mauricio

Kagel in English. It is a comprehensive study of Kagel’s works, including several

biographical elements. Of course it does not analyse individual works in depth, but it

gives useful information regarding the ideas related to the conception of each

composition and a very clear image of the development of Kagel’s compositional

techniques from his early youth in Buenos Aires until the beginning of the current

century. It is also a good initiating point for research, as it gives a concise list of

writings on Kagel and by Kagel. Dieter Schnebel’s Mauricio Kagel: Musik, Theater,

Film (Schnebel, 1970) is also very helpful for the purposes of this study, as it contains

important information and detailed accounts of Kagel’s work up to 1970, when he made

Ludwig van. Schnebel’s book does not include Ludwig van, but it can help us examine

Kagel’s creative activity at the time just before he made the film, including analyses of

his films before Ludwig van, in which we can study his filming techniques and the

manipulation of sound in his films as these evolved before the film in question. Finally,

an equally useful piece of literature on Kagel is Werner Klüppelholz's Mauricio Kagel

1970-1980 (Klüppelholz, 1981). Klüppelholz provides us with concise and critical

accounts and analyses of all Kagel's works from the decade in which Ludwig van was

made.

Concerning the film, once again, Klüppelholz’s book is one of the most

frequently cited sources in my own work. In his in-depth account of Ludwig van: Ein

Bericht (Klüppelholz, 1981: 11-8), he includes many interesting comments on the music

and content of the film, as well as a fascinating interpretation of Kagel’s intentions.

There are a number of other writings on the film which have been fruitful for the

purpose of this dissertation; all of them are in German, since the English texts on

Ludwig van seem to be intended for people who have not actually watched it, and

therefore offer a description rather than an analysis of it – such an article is Michael

1 Unless otherwise stated, the translations of the German texts have been done by me with the invaluable help of Jenny Bredull; in the case of Klüppelholz’s “Ludwig van: 1. Ein Bericht; 2. Hommage von Beethoven” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 11-21), the translation is by Jenny Bredull alone.

Page 17: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

17

Chanan's “Kagel's Films” (Chanan, 1974: 45-6). Christiane Hillebrand's book, Film als

totale Komposition (Hillebrand, 1996), provides us with some useful information

regarding the filming techniques used in Ludwig van, and Werner Klüppelholz's and

Lothar Prox's Mauricio Kagel: Das filmische Werk I. 1965-1985 (Klüppelholz-Prox,

1985) quotes a short note by Kagel himself on the film, as well as extracts from the

script and a list of the music used in the film. Christian Brix’s MA dissertation, »Ludwig

van« Zu Mauricio Kagels Beethoven-Film (Brix, 2004), provides a discussion of several

secondary sources concerning the film and its music, but, in my opinion, does not offer

much of his own views on the subject. Finally, Knut Holsträter’s articles,

“Kompositionsweisen in Mauricio Kagels filmischer Arbeit zu Ludwig van, dargestellt

an der Handschuhsequenz und dem Musikzimmer” (Holsträter, 2003) and “Kagel,

Beuys, Beethoven … in Flux” (Holsträter, 2004) are both extremely illuminating pieces

of writing: the former provides both technical information concerning the shooting of

the film, and, most importantly, an extended discussion of the film’s music; the latter

explores Kagel’s connection to the Fluxus artists, some of whom designed the rooms of

the Beethovenhaus in the film.

Since the film’s main subject is Beethoven’s reception in the years after his

death, it is important to include some writings on this subject in this literature review.

There are several published items on various aspects of the composer’s reception. In

“The four ages of Beethoven” (Burnham, 2000: 272-91), Scott Burnham analyses four

different approaches to Beethoven that he has detected from the Romantic era to the

present. He comments on the fact that everything surrounding Beethoven as a physical

person has been analysed in such a depth that “no longer can any one person control the

vision of the whole” (Burnham, 2000: 289). He speaks of a “ritual dismemberment of

the hero, namely, the translation of the mythic composer into the objects of kitsch”

(Burnham, 2000: 289), something that is very vividly portrayed in Kagel’s film.

Theodor von Frimmel’s Beethoven’s äußere Erscheinung (Beethoven’s external

appearance; Frimmel, 1905), which also features in a sequence of the film, seems to be

a fascinating example of how scholarship has investigated every possible piece of

knowledge on trivial things concerning Beethoven’s life. Esteban Buch’s Beethoven’s

Ninth (Buch, 2003) studies Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a “political” work, as it has

been used and misused from Beethoven’s death till the 20th century. Buch dedicates

some pages of his book to Kagel’s use of the Ninth Symphony in Ludwig van, and even

Page 18: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

18

to its reception by critics in West and East Germany. On the same topic, David Dennis’

book, Beethoven in German Politics (1870-1989) (Dennis, 1996), concentrates on the

political “misuse” of Beethoven in Germany over a shorter period; it is not restricted to

one work, but follows the political uses of Beethoven’s music and his image in general.

It seems that all these writings investigate issues that Kagel has, in an artistic way,

raised through his film. Finally, Stephen Loy’s PhD dissertation Beethoven and

Radicalism: Socio-Political Engagement and awareness of Tradition in New Music,

1968-1977 (Loy, 2006) and, last but not least, Beate Kutschke’s article The Celebration

of Beethoven’s Bicentennial in 1970: The Antiauthoritarian Movement and Its Impact

on Radical Avant-garde and Postmodern Music in West Germany both relate music

composed around the same period as Ludwig van containing references to Beethoven to

the socio-political happenings in Europe at that time, and mainly the anti-authoritarian

movement.

Because of the nature of the score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven, there

is no musical analysis (in the traditional sense) of it in the secondary literature – and it is

probably pointless to embark on such a task. In order to examine this work musically

and to reach conclusions as to how it should be performed, we need to consult literature

on experimental music and its performance practice. Michael Nyman’s Experimental

Music: Cage and Beyond (Nyman, 1974) provides interesting views on experimental

music of the 1950s and 1960s, although at times his categorisations can be – and have

been – argued to be a little simplistic. John Cage’s Silence (Cage, 1961) contains the

beliefs of arguably the most influential person in the world of experimental music. As

for the field of performance of such music, some of the works quoted in this essay are

Philip Thomas’ “Determining the Indeterminate” (Thomas, 2007) and “A Prescription

for Action” (Thomas, 2009), as well as John Holzaepfel’s “Painting by Numbers: The

Intersections of Morton Feldman and David Tudor” (Holzaepfel, 2002a) and “Cage and

Tudor” (Holzaepfel, 2002b), which offer different opinions on how a performer should

approach indeterminate scores.

Although a strictly musical examination of the score is necessary, it also raises

other issues to be dealt with, which are more philosophical and have to do with the spirit

of its time. Since it is nothing but a collage (or a “metacollage”, as Kagel calls it) of

quotations and there is not a single note in any of the primary sources that constitute

Page 19: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

19

Ludwig van that Kagel wrote himself, the score can be said to question very directly the

concept of authorship, and it bears a relationship to postmodern and poststructuralist

theories. The first article in this territory that comes to mind is Roland Barthes’ “The

Death of the Author” (Barthes, 1977, first published in 1967): in it Barthes argues that

each text is made up of various quotations, and that it is not the author that gives

meaning to a text, but each individual reader (Barthes, 1977: 142-8). It seems as if

Kagel is by analogy presenting us with a musical text full of quotations and giving so

much freedom to the performer (who can be regarded as the initial reader of the musical

text) in order to demonstrate the importance of the performer’s role. As he says at the

end of his preface to the score, “I give all this as an introduction and invitation.

Musicians can go from here” (Kagel, 1970: XI). The concept of intertextuality, coined

by Julia Kristeva in 1966 and referring to the fact that “Any text is constructed as a

mosaic of quotations” (Kristeva, 1986: 66, first published in 1966) is also obviously

relevant to Kagel’s “metacollage”, as Ludwig van is literally a mosaic of quotations.

Both Barthes’ concept of the end of authorship and Kristeva’s concept of

intertextuality are considered important issues of the postmodern debate, and therefore it

is arguable that Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven can be considered a postmodern

composition. The most well-known and direct attempt to define, or rather to describe,

postmodern music has been made by Jonathan Kramer, in his article, “The Nature and

Origins of Musical Postmodernism” (Kramer, 2002: 13-26). In it, Kramer compiles a

list of sixteen characteristics that postmodern music tends to have. It may seem quite

simplistic to limit postmodernism to a list of characteristics, but Kramer does warn

against the checklist approach, and he makes it clear that he does not consider

postmodern music “a neat category with rigid boundaries” (Kramer, 2002: 17). As for

Kagel and whether he could be labelled as a postmodernist composer, Björn Heile’s

article, “Collage vs. Compositional Control: The Interdependency of Modernist and

Postmodernist Approaches in the Work of Mauricio Kagel” (Heile, 2002: 287-99), is an

important piece of writing on this topic. Heile considers compositional control as a

modernist principle and collage as its postmodern counter-principle, and believes that

they are “intertwined and interacting” in the work of Kagel. However, he admits that

Ludwig van can be taken as a typically postmodern composition, as it is Kagel’s only

work in which he has given up any form of “compositional control” (Heile, 2002: 291).

The other approaches to postmodern art that I will employ in my dissertation include

Page 20: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

20

Charles Jencks’ definition of postmodernism as double-coding, presented in his books,

The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (Jencks, 1977) and What is Post-

modernism? (Jencks, 1996, first published in 1986), and Hal Foster’s distinction

between a postmodernism of reaction and a postmodernism of resistance, addressed in

his preface to the book The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Jencks,

1998, ix-xvii, first published in 1983).

Finally, in relation to the philosophical aspects of Ludwig van, it should be

mentioned that many scholars refer to Kagel as a deconstructionist; according to Paul

Attinello (in the “Kagel, Mauricio” entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and

Musicians, Attinello, 2001, but also in “Imploding the System: Kagel and the

Deconstruction of Modernism”, Attinello, 2002), he is characterised by a “restless

desire to deconstruct the canon”. Unfortunately, Attinello does not provide us with a

theoretical background in order to link Kagel’s music to Derrida’s concept of

deconstruction. The first scholar who attempted to justify the use of deconstruction in

musical analysis was Rose Rosengard Subotnik, in her article, “How Could Chopin’s A-

Major Prelude Be Deconstructed?” (Subotnik, 1996: 39-147), in which she provides a

thorough theoretical justification for why and how we can apply deconstructive reading

to a piece of music. However, Subotnik, like Derrida himself, refers to an application of

deconstruction to an already existing text, albeit a musical one, and not to

deconstruction through the process of composition itself, as presumably in the case of

Kagel. In order to deal with the concept of deconstruction, and to relate it to Kagel’s

composition, I am going to use Derrida’s writings, particularly Positions (Derrida,

1981), in which he explains his concept of deconstructing hierarchical binary

oppositions, and “Letter to a Japanese friend” (Derrida, 1985), in which he explains the

procedure that led him to coining the term deconstruction. Apart from these, I will refer

to Greg Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism” (Ulmer, 1998, first published in 1983),

which examines the relation between deconstruction and the practice of collage in the

arts.

Page 21: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

21

Chapter II

Ludwig van in context

The aim of this chapter is to provide some background information concerning Ludwig

van, its composer and the time in which it was conceived. In the first section I will

discuss the historico-social context of the late 1960s in central Europe: how the protest

movement of the time influenced avant-garde composers, as well as Beethoven’s

reception at that time; subsequently I will try to identify Kagel’s own attitude towards

the political happenings of his time and his view towards tradition. In the second section

I will introduce some genres of experimental music: since I consider Ludwig van an

experimental work, I will examine some of the basic problems of performing such

music and finally I will refer to some other works by Kagel which exhibit aspects of

experimentalism.

Page 22: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

22

1. Historico-social context � attitude towards tradition

A. The anti-authoritarian movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its impact on

avant-garde composers

In order to understand Ludwig van better, and to examine its attitude towards

Beethoven, it is necessary to bear in mind some of the most important historical events

and currents of the era in which it was conceived. The late 1960s was quite a dramatic

period for global politics: the Cold War and the Vietnam War were in full swing, Che

Guevara and Martin Luther King were killed, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia

in reaction to the Prague Spring, to name but a few important events. On a social level,

there was a lot of unrest as various social groups tried to oppose conservatism and

demanded social reform: the civil rights movement reached its peak in the 1960s, and

the second feminist wave, the hippie movement, the sexual revolution as well as the gay

rights movement, all gained visibility around the same time. In Western Europe, the

most significant social happenings of the time, which can be argued to have influenced

Kagel and his conception of Ludwig van, were the demonstrations of students and

workers which took place around the end of the decade in France, Germany and

elsewhere, and which reached their climax in 1968.

Naturally, the protest movement in West Germany shared some of the reasons of

the general unrest on an international level, such as disapproval of the Vietnam War and

the various injustices that the Western world was imposing on third world countries. In

addition to these it was also caused by discontent with a corrupt and authoritarian state,

the urge to deal with the country’s Nazi past, demands for a social reform and

disapproval of a law which would limit constitutional freedoms in states of emergency,

and which was finally passed in May 1968.2 The protest movement was most closely

associated with the New Left, a political movement which, according to Beate

Kutschke, differed from the traditional Marxist Left in that it was against authority of

any kind, including within a communist system (Kutschke, 2010: 571). This movement

2 Stuart J. Hilwig’s, The Revolt Against the Establishment – Students Versus the Press in West Germany and Italy (Hilwig, 1998) and Claus Leggewie’s “A Laboratory of Postindustrial Society – Reassessing the 1960s in Germany” (Leggwie, 1998) provide valuable information as to the general causes of the protests in West Germany.

Page 23: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

23

was largely influenced by Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno, and

opposed any kind of authority or hierarchy, whether this had to do with the state,

society, the educational system or even the family. Part of this mentality was

responsible for a questioning of traditional values in the classical music world which is

to be found in several works and writings of this period.

Kutschke shows the impact the antiauthoritarian movement had in musical life

in the 1960s. She argues that, regarding classical music concerts, it was only some

young musical critics that seemed to be influenced by the political climate, “by

reviewing concert performances and recordings from the viewpoint of their new

sociopolitically oriented value system” (Kutschke, 2010: 561); the classical music

enterprise itself did not appear to change in any way. On the other hand, several

composers of the time were affected by the antiauthoritarian climate in several respects:

by rejecting the ideal of beauty as a product of bourgeois culture, and adopting

Adorno’s aesthetics of negativity; by questioning traditional hierarchies of the classical

music world, such as the opposition between composer and performer, or between

conductor and musicians; or by adopting a critical stance towards the canon and the

classical music tradition.

The ways in which the music composed in this period was influenced by the

political climate vary considerably, especially according to the aesthetic value or

authority being challenged. For instance, Nicolaus A. Huber and Helmut Lachenmann –

the latter having being branded a “denial-musician” (Verweigerungsmusiker) – “set out

to eradicate any trace of inherited (‘bourgeois’) notions of beauty attaching to particular

instruments” (Toop, 2004: 473). Lachenmann’s Guero (1969) for piano, replaced the

usual sounds of the piano with noises produced by scratching the piano's tuning pegs,

strings, and keys themselves. Dieter Schnebel and Gerhard Stäbler, on the other hand,

“turned against what Adorno had labeled omnipresent rationalization and instrumental

reason and, instead, revitalized first nature, subjectivity, and creatureliness” (Kutschke,

2010: 561): in other words, Kutschke explains, they avoided “artificial” musical figures

and employed the natural sounds of the human body. Works which exhibit this tendency

are Schnebel’s Schulmusik, which consists of a series of musical events for six or more

players designed to help young musicians develop their own creativity and ability to

work in a team (Schnebel, 1975), and his Maulwerke (1968-1974), “for organs of

Page 24: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

24

articulation and devices for reproduction”, as well as Stäbler’s drüber… (1972-1973),

for eight active shouters, cello, synthesizer, and tape, which “drew attention to the body

of the performer, her gestures, her movements as center, not just side-

product or means of the sound production” (Kutschke, 2010: 597). Other composers

questioned the idea of stylistic unity, such as Hans Werner Henze, whose idea of a

“musica impura” described “a music whose style is deliberately inconsistent, since

different styles are necessary to symbolize different social strata or reflect different

ideologies” (Toop, 2004: 473). Another aspect of the tradition challenged was the

hierarchy in the relationships between composer or conductor and performer, which led

to the developing of “ensemble structures and performance practices that avoided not

only a conductor and hierarchal relationships between the musicians, but also the use of

a score” (Kutschke, 2010: 576).

Finally, in several works of this period, one of which is definitely Kagel’s

Ludwig van, the authority attacked is that of great composers of the past, aspects of

whose music are incorporated within the context of “new music”. Thus, according to

Kutschke, the antiauthoritarian movement of the 1960s is to a great extent responsible

for the emergence of postmodern music in the 1970s. When using this term in her

article, Kutschke refers to “West German postmodern music”, as it has been established

in German music discourse, namely “as label for a group of works composed between

the early 1970s and the early to mid-1990s that shared a pluralism of styles, the mixture

of high and low art, the display of ‘neoromantic’ characteristics produced by expressive

articulation, the reintegration of major-minor tonality, and – most important in this

context – the adoption of stylistic peculiarities or idioms of earlier composers”

(Kutschke, 2010: 567). Therefore, it is no surprise that much of the music written by

composers influenced by the anti-authoritarian movement fall into this category.3

3 In section IV.2 of this thesis I will include extensive discussion of different points of view on what can be labelled postmodern art.

Page 25: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

25

B. Beethoven as bourgeois symbol and as revolutionary – the Beethoven year 1970

In the midst of this political climate, the Beethoven bicentenary in 1970, for which

Ludwig van was commissioned, was bound to be affected by the anti-authoritarian

movement. Kutschke argues that, although the numerous concerts and recordings of

Beethoven’s music, the publications on his music, as well as a film about his life,

suggest an ordinary celebration, there were two “surprising deviations from the usual

great-masters’ celebration rituals”. The first one she detects is a scepticism regarding

the meaning and necessity of celebration: a characteristic example is the commentary

“Heute noch Beethoven?” (Still Beethoven Today?) on Hessian radio, in which Kagel

was also involved, among others. The second “deviation” is that, for this bicentenary,

several new works were composed, in which extracts of Beethoven’s music were

incorporated in avant-garde musical idioms or concepts; some of those works were

actually commissioned by well established cultural organisations (Kutschke, 2010:

562). The works that Kutschke mentions, all composed for the bicentenary, are, apart

from Ludwig van, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kurzwellen für Beethoven, Giuseppe

Chiari's Al chiaro di luna di Beethoven and Wilhelm Dieter Siebert’s Unser Ludwig

1970. There are also a number of other works composed in the period of the student

demonstrations in Western Europe and America which make use of Beethoven’s music

and which can be argued to be influenced by the political climate of the time: Louis

Andriessen’s De Negen Symphonieën van Beethoven voor Promenade Orkest en

Yscobel, (The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven for Promenade Orchestra and Ice-cream

Vendor’s Bell, 1970) and André Boucourechliev’s Ombres (Shadows, 1970) were both

commissioned by festivals celebrating Beethoven’s bicentenary, whereas Luciano

Berio’s Sinfonia (1968), Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Photoptosis (1968), John Cage’s

HPSCHD, (1969), Hans Werner Henze’s; La Cubana: Oder Ein Leben für die Kunst

(1973) and even the Beatles’ Revolution 9 (released in 1968), all made use of

Beethoven’s music in a manner which can be argued, according to Stephen Loy, to have

political connotations (Loy, 2006). Some of these works will be further discussed later

in this section.

It is not surprising that Beethoven’s bicentenary was met with scepticism and

that, apart from conventional concerts and tributes, it triggered new works in which

Beethoven’s music sounded “torn apart and alienated” (Kutschke 2010: 565). The main

Page 26: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

26

reason for this was that, since the protest movement attacked any kind of authority, it

was only natural that, being arguably the most recognisable figure of the Western

musical canon and a symbol of bourgeois culture, Beethoven had to be reassessed in the

light of the anti-authoritarian movement’s beliefs. As music critic Gerhard R. Koch put

it in his article “Beethoven a tempo”, “meaningful musical interpretation [of

Beethoven's works] should aim at scratching off the gypsum and varnish, and washing

away the layer of dirt of holy convention” (Koch, quoted in Kutschke, 2010: 569),

meaning that Beethoven’s music has been so associated with the aesthetics of bourgeois

culture, that we have to perform it in new ways in order to shake this connotation off it.

Koch goes on to argue that “the authoritarian claim of the classic culture must be

abolished” (Koch, quoted in Kutschke, 2010: 577). Another reason why the bicentenary

was not met only with enthusiasm is Beethoven’s association with Nazi Germany and

how the National Socialist party used his music and his image for propaganda purposes.

This memory was still very fresh, and contributed to the association of Beethoven with

repressive authority. According to Kutschke, this association may be responsible for the

change in Adorno’s view of Beethoven after the Second World War: he abandoned the

idea of writing a book on Beethoven as an enlightened composer, and instead

characterised his music as authoritative and repressive (Kutschke, 2010: 578).

The works composed in this period which are most directly political, according

to Loy, are those by Andriessen and Henze, two composers who were involved in the

radical left-wing political movements in Holland and Germany respectively, and who

believed it crucial for music to be politically oriented (Loy, 2006: 78). Andriessen’s De

Negen Symphonieën van Beethoven, the result of a commission for Beethoven’s

bicentenary, includes quotations from all nine symphonies and some piano sonatas by

Beethoven, merged with aspects of popular music and everyday sounds, as well as the

Dutch national anthem and the socialist Internationale. Through this juxtaposition he

removes Beethoven from the cultural context in which he is usually heard, and he

“attacks the notion of classical orchestral concerts” and “challenges what he perceives

as one of the cultural fundamentals of bourgeois society” (Loy, 2006: 31-2). Henze’s La

Cubana was composed in 1973 and Beethoven is not its primal focus: it is a vaudeville

whose theme is “the futility and dubiousness of art and artists, explored in the person of

a Cuban music-hall queen” (Henze, 1982: 207), who is devoted to art and indifferent to

the revolution taking place outside. Excerpts from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata,

Page 27: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

27

played by “a tired old woman” (Henze, 1982: 211), are juxtaposed with different

musical idioms, symbolising a fixation with tradition and the idea of art for art’s sake,

which is criticised by Henze. Both these composers use Beethoven’s music in unusual

contexts, in order to demonstrate their questioning of the role of art in bourgeois

society; both composers have expressed their admiration for Beethoven and have

claimed that such use of excerpts of his music in their works is not intended simply as a

criticism of the composer himself (Loy, 2006: 62, 76): it is intended as a questioning of

the notion of art as indifferent to the social movements of the time.

Stockhausen’s Kurzwellen für Beethoven is another work which deserves to be

mentioned here, as, like Ludwig van, it was commissioned for the bicentenary in

Germany and recorded on Deutsche Grammophon. The work is based on the same idea

as his Kurzwellen (1968), which is one of his so-called process compositions, in which

the actual content of the work is not prescribed for the performer, but only the process

through which it is to be generated.4 In Kurzwellen, which is scored for piano,

electronium, tam tam and viola, each player is also assigned a short-wave radio

receiver: each of them uses the receiver to produce sounds, to which they respond

intuitively, according to certain guidelines given by the composer (Loy, 2005: 185-6).

Thus, each performance varies depending both on the performers and on the material

derived from the receivers. For Kurzwellen für Beethoven, Stockhausen replaced the

radio receivers with tapes of collages from Beethoven’s music he made himself,

including excerpts from symphonies, chamber music works, piano sonatas, choral

works as well as extracts from his letters. The idea behind it was, according to

Stockhausen, “to simulate the improbable ‘special case’ in which, wherever we tune,

Beethoven’s music is playing from the short-wave receivers, interspersed with passages

from his letters” (Wörner, 1973: 76-7). Kurzwellen is in line with his compositions of

that time, in that it demonstrates a similar spiritual aspect: as in other works such as Aus

den sieben Tagen, the performer is required to follow their intuition, in order, so to

speak, to become a mouthpiece for forces beyond themselves. In Kurzwellen, by using

radio broadcasts as a source material, he is pursuing the world-wide, the ego-

transcending, the universal (Wörner, 1973: 68). Consequently, by replacing the radio

broadcasts with Beethoven, he embraces an idea of the great composer as a “timelessly

4 Stockhausen’s process compositions are those “in which the score consists primarily of transformation processes: a blueprint for composition rather than a finished work” (Tarr, 2001: 402)

Page 28: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

28

universal spirit” (Wörner, 1973: 77). Loy argues that although Stockhausen was never

involved in the protest movements and “established a clearly non-leftist position” (Tarr,

2001: 405), “the influence of these radical movements on Stockhausen may be seen, not

in specific ideologies, but [in] the idealistic belief in the vision of a better society” (Loy,

2006: 181). Loy sees Beethoven’s use in Kurzwellen as a unifying cosmic force serving

Stockhausen’s utopian vision; Kutschke, on the other hand, sees it as “an upshot of the

totalitarian Beethoven image”, since it depicts an omnipresent, total Beethoven

(Kutschke, 2010: 580). It is hard to determine if it is Loy or Kutschke who interprets

Stockhausen’s intention better; but it is worth noting that both of them discern

influences of the anti-authoritarian movement in Kurzwellen für Beethoven, even though

its composer was never part of this movement.

Another work worth referring to in this context is Boucourechliev’s Ombres,

especially as it exhibits certain similarities to Ludwig van in the way it treats the quoted

material. Although much of it is through-composed, there are some sections in which

the performers are asked to move freely through a number of different quotations: “All

instrumentalists have these double-pages in their parts: they can move inside at will,

starting from the initial cell built around the held D…: Each of them may play and

repeat each figure chosen on whatever stave (without being compelled to play them

all)” (Boucourechliev, 1973: 5, quoted in Loy, 2006: 219). Boucourechliev stresses the

importance of the choice of performers, rather than chance, in the shaping of any

performance. This is the main political aspect in Ombres; the composer deconstructs the

hierarchy that requires the performers to comply with rules imposed from the composer

or the conductor, and asks them to be creative and intuitive: “The conductor does not

conduct; at rehearsals, he calls all instrumentalists to mutual listening, he sees to the

respect of the general level (ppp-mp) and to not allow any figure to be predominant

through an excessive intensity (they must all melt into each other and be guessed rather

than underlined)” (Boucourechliev, 1973: 5, quoted in Loy, 2006: 219).

Berio’s Sinfonia is a collage of various musical and literary texts from various

eras, including Beethoven’s Pastorale Symphony, Beckett’s The Unnameable, as well

as slogans from the May 1968 student protests in Paris, as a means of “critiquing the

relationship of culture and society” and “question[ing] the relevance of past cultures,

and culture in general, to wider contemporary social issues” (Loy, 2006: 309). In a

Page 29: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

29

similar manner Zimmermann’s Photoptosis combines various quotations, including

extracts from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, over the chorale Veni Creator Spritus as a

cantus firmus; Loy argues that his use of Beethoven symbolises “an embracing of all

eras of music history simultaneously, as a means of exemplifying musically his

conception of spherical time” (Loy, 2006: 231). In Cage’s HPSCHD for harpsichord, a

number of quotations from Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and others are

arranged using chance procedures; according to the composer, HPSCHD is

[…] a political art which is not about politics but political itself. As an anarchist, I aim to get rid of politics. I would prefer to drop the question of power… Only by looking out the back window, as McLuhan says, do we concern ourselves with power. If we look forward, we see cooperation and things being made possible, to make the world work so that any kind of living can take place (Cage, quoted in Kazin, 1972: 19).

HPSCHD is political in the same way as Stockhausen’s Kurzwellen: not by overtly

supporting the radical protest movements of their time, but by seeking utopian

alternatives to authority and power.

It seems that the compositions which made use of Beethoven’s music in this

period, regardless of whether their main focus was Beethoven or not and whether they

are politically oriented works or not, exhibit at least some reference to the political

movements of the time; this confirms, once again, how associated Beethoven’s image

was with politics at this period, both due to his authoritative nature within the context of

Western art music, and because of his misuse by the Nazi regime. What is most

remarkable is that, while being used as a symbol of bourgeois culture and authority,

Beethoven is also seen as the prototype of a revolutionary composer: as Loy states,

“Beethoven represented both the icon of tradition against which they [socio-politically

motivated composers] were compelled to rebel, whilst simultaneously embodying

aspects of the revolutionary and aesthetic ideals that motivated such a rebellion” (Loy,

2006: 2). Instead of simply rejecting Beethoven as a mere symbol of a conservative

society, composers found and highlighted elements of his music which surpassed this

framework and served their revolutionary aims. Therefore, Beethoven’s image either as

a dangerous symbol of authority or as a source of inspiration of the revolutionaries

seems to have been a rather significant influence on the music of the anti-authoritarian

composers of that time.

Page 30: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

30

C. Kagel’s political views and his attitude towards tradition

It is a difficult task to determine Kagel’s political views or his attitude towards the

protest movement. Paul Attinello, in his entry on Kagel in The New Grove dictionary,

claims that, although he came from a left-leaning family and was associated with anti-

Perón artistic circles in Buenos Aires, Kagel’s disillusionment with the communists

during the Spanish Civil War – because of their fighting the anarchists and thus

becoming easy prey for the fascists – led to his sympathising with “anarchists, both

political and artistic” (Attinello, 2001: 310). However, in his interview with Stephen

Loy, Kagel says that he does not see himself as an anarchic composer, and implies that

what Attinello means by this characterisation is that he rejects style, he never repeats

himself and that his work is unclassifiable (Loy, 2006: 364). Loy also questions the

credibility of Attinello’s statement, since Kagel would have only been eight years old at

the end of the Spanish Civil War, and therefore probably too young to reach any

conclusions regarding the communist policies at the war. Bjorn Heile, on the other

hand, argues that his political views were indeed leaning to the left, but that, around

1970, Kagel “fell out with his former political companions” and “dissociated himself

from the West-German Left”, mainly because he criticised the Soviet invasion of

Prague and because the New Leftists did not consider him radical enough (Heile, quoted

in Kutschke, 2010: 602). Kutschke disagrees with him, claiming that the New Left did

not have a clear position regarding the invasion of Prague, and that the fact that his

works were not considered political by New Leftist critics does not imply that Kagel

himself did not sympathise with their ideology (Kutschke, 2010: 602-3). Her opinion is

that Kagel aligned himself with the New Leftist critical value system, even though he

never took an explicit stand in favour of the student and protest movements (Kutschke,

2010: 570).

In any case, Kagel cannot be considered a political composer, in the sense that

Andriessen and Henze were political composers. It is true that a few of his works do

engage directly with political matters: for example, the radio play Der Tribun (The

Tribune, 1979), for a political orator, marching sounds and loudspeakers, in which the

text is a nonsensical collage of phrases alluding to political speeches, sounding like “a

compendium of populist demagoguery” (Heile, 2006: 91); and the later work Fragende

Ode (Questioning Ode, 1989), in which the ideals of the French Revolution “liberty,

Page 31: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

31

equality, fraternity” are followed by the simple question “When?” in a number of

different languages. Even in these works, however, Kagel does not take a specific

position, aligned with a political current of the time, but rather poses questions and

challenges the status quo: in Der Tribun, the speaker could belong to any political

movement from fascism to communism, and it is not his political views that are being

satirised, but the patronising propaganda which is an aspect shared between various

political leaders; similarly, in Die Fragende Ode, the only comment Kagel adds to the

ideals of the French revolution is one question, expressing his scepticism towards these

ideals and their plausibility, but not from a specific ideological point of view. The main

link between Kagel and the anti-authoritarian movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which

reveals the influence that the political situation had on him, is the fact that he engages

with tradition and constantly questions it. Glyn Perrin argues that

[E]ach of Kagel’s works is inseparably bound to tradition, more specifically to a musical one. But whether working with a genre (such as opera or the string quartet), re-examining another composer (such as Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms) or analysing the mechanisms of ensemble playing or the role of the conductor, Kagel neither blindly perpetuates nor contemptuously dismisses the tradition (Perrin, 1981: 10)

Kagel’s way of questioning authority was by composing works which referred to

tradition – either the Western canonic masterpieces, or the concert hall tradition – in

which he neither follows tradition, nor rejects it; he constantly reinvents his position

towards it by viewing it in different ways.

Ludwig van is the first of a long list of compositions by Kagel which directly

refer to canonic composers. Two years later, for the celebration of Brahms’ 140th

anniversary in 1973, he composed Variationen ohne Fuge (Variations without a Fugue)

for large orchestra on Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel for piano op.24 by

Johannes Brahms (1861/62) (1972). It is obvious from the title that this is a musical

work that refers to another, which already refers to another, in other words “a

commentary on a commentary” (Heile, 2002: 291). The work consists of a series of

transformations of Brahms’ variations, which sound distorted, demonstrating the

historical distance (Heile, 2006: 116). Near the end of the piece, the figures of Brahms

and Handel walk on stage, where the former recites a pompously dramatic monologue –

a collage from his writings – while the latter waits silently. One of Kagel’s later works

Page 32: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

32

refers to the third of the great B’s of the German canon: Sankt-Bach-Passion (Saint

Bach’s Passion 1985) is, like Bach’s own passions, scored for soloists, one of whom is

the narrator, a large choir, a children’s choir and an orchestra (including an organ). The

“gospel” text is taken from the necrology for Bach by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and

his student Johann Friedrich Agricola and, as is typical in Kagel’s work, a sense of

irony is intertwined with a sincere feeling of respect and homage to the great composer.

There are numerous other works by Kagel which refer to canonic composers, but

it would be outside the purposes of this chapter to discuss all of them. It would be

worth, nevertheless, to mention some of them: Unguis incarnatus est (combination of

“unguis incarnatus”, a medical term meaning “ingrown toenail”, and “incarnatus est”, a

phrase from the Latin Credo which refers to the action of the Son of God being

incarnated, acquiring a human body, 1972), scored “for piano and …”, where “…” can

be replaced by any bass instrument, is a chamber work most of whose melodic and

harmonic material is taken from Liszt’s Nuages Gris (Grey Clouds, S.199, 1881);

Mitternachtstück (Midnight piece, 1980-1, 1986), for voices and instruments, is based

on gothic short stories from the diaries of Robert Schumann. Fürst Igor,

Strawinsky (Prince Igor, Stravinsky, 1982), for solo bass and instrumental ensemble,

refers both to Stravinsky and to Borodin, from whose opera Prince Igor the bass’s text

is taken. The piece …nach einer Lektüre von Orwell: Hörspiel in germanischer

Metasprache (…upon reading Orwell: radio play in Germanic meta-language, 1984)

alludes to Liszt’s Après une Lecture de Dante for piano. In Interview avec D. pour

Monsieur Croche et orchestre (Interview with D., for Monsieur Croche and Orchetra,

1994), the narrator answers imaginary questions posed by the orchestra, reciting texts

from Debussy’s interviews.

There are also numerous of Kagel’s works which refer to and comment on

musical tradition in a more general way, rather than by concentrating on specific

composers. The instrumental theatre pieces Sonant (1960/…) and Sur Scène (1959-

1960), both comment on aspects of musical life, outside music itself. In the former, the

musicians are instructed to perform several theatrical tasks, such as signalling entries,

conducting passages of the music, humming or singing parts of the work, grunting when

they have to play a difficult harmonic and grumbling when performing a crescendo

(Schnebel, 1970: 77): all emphasising on the visual aspects of musical performance

Page 33: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

33

while the music is hardly audible. Thus Kagel reverses the formalistic claim that music

is only about sound, and that its visual aspects are only there to serve the music and

should not concern the audience. By exposing the “making of” music and concealing

the “final result”, he negates the “divine” character of music and highlights its more

human aspects. In the latter work, in addition to the musicians, there are also a mime,

who impersonates the audience, and an actor, who plays a music critic or musicologist

who gives a nonsensical lecture on post-War music, thus incorporating music reception

and criticism into the music itself; the result is a self-referential work which blurs the

distinction between the stage (scène) and what traditionally happens off stage.

There are also works by Kagel whose focus is on the tradition of specific genres

within the classical music tradition. For instance, Staatstheater (1967-1971) was

described by Kagel himself as “not just the negation of opera, but of the whole tradition

of musical theatre” (quoted in Attinello, 2001: 310). It consists of nine sections which

make use of all the resources found in an opera house – singers, choir, dancers,

orchestra – in a totally unorthodox way and with all the traditional hierarchies between

them deconstructed: the choristers sing more individualised parts than the soloists; the

instrumentalists move on stage on mechanised chairs, whereas the soloists stand in a

semi-circle as a choir; various famous opera scenes are shown “inverted or emptied of

meaning” (Attinello, 2002: 279). Kagel uses all the traditional elements of musical

theatre, but in such a way that they lose their meaning in the traditional context. As

Kagel says, “The same steps that are for instance necessary for a particular scene in

Tosca are not emptied of contents in Staatstheater or parodied, but become the

contents” (Kagel, 1975: 90; quoted and translated in Heile, 2006: 58). By depriving the

components of an opera of their meaning, Kagel seems to deconstruct this genre and to

speculate over its relevance in contemporary society.

His next opera, Aus Deutschland (1979), dedicated to Heinrich Heine, is based

on texts from German Lieder by Schubert and Schumann and demonstrates an ironical

stance towards common themes of the German romantic art song. The subtlety and

intimacy of the Lied as a genre are replaced by vulgar scenes that take the metaphors

which are typical of Romantic poetry too literally: the singer dies from Schubert’s songs

in “Vergiftet sind meine Lieder” (my songs are poisoned); the phrase “beglücke mich”

(please me) from “Leise flehen meine Lieder” is taken in its modern German meaning,

Page 34: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

34

which is explicitly sexual, rather than in the sense in which Ludwig Rellstab, the poet,

probably meant it, and it is therefore sung during a vulgar sexual scene; Carpani’s In

questa tomba oscura (In this dark tomb, set to music by Beethoven, WoO 133) is sung

in an open grave, whereas Death from Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the

maiden by Matthias Claudius, set to music by Schubert, D.531) appears on stage in a

clichéd, grotesque impersonation, dressed in black and carrying a sickle. Similarly

literal are the translations of some of the songs into English, which were done word for

word, in such a way that the syntax of the English texts is peculiar and awkward. In

general, Kagel decontextualises German Lieder texts: he presents them independently of

their original music and aesthetic connotations, making them sound alienated, or even

ridiculous.

It would be incorrect to label Kagel as a political composer, since his works do

not tend to have an openly political meaning and they do not seem to have been

composed in order to serve any particular political aim. But it is obvious that many of

them are influenced by the political happenings of his time, and that in many of them

this influence is expressed by the way of questioning authority, and particularly that of

the established classical music tradition: composers of the past, common musical

genres, the concert hall tradition. Thus, it seems that Kagel’s turn to postmodern

composition is, to a great extent, caused by his being influenced by the political climate

of the time and his anti-authoritarian attitude. Ludwig van, the subject of this

dissertation, is one of the most important examples of this turn in Kagel’s career.

Page 35: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

35

2. Experimental music and its performance

A. Definitions

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the score instructions for Ludwig van:

Hommage von Beethoven leave a great deal to be determined by the performers, and as

a result of this, any two performances of the score are bound to be very different: the

material from which the performers are to generate their parts – either by planning it or

spontaneously – is vast (it includes all of Beethoven’s works) and the order and manner

in which this material is to be played is also not specified by Kagel. Thus, although he

was essentially part of the European avant-garde, the work in question seems to have a

lot in common with what is generally called “experimental music”.

Obviously, this term is extremely general and hard to define in a few words; in

one of the most well-known and quoted books on this subject, Experimental Music –

Cage and beyond (Nyman, 1974), the English composer and critic Michael Nyman

generally uses the music of the European avant-garde (such as Boulez, Xenakis and

Stockhausen) in order to show in which ways so-called experimental music – which,

according to him is essentially American and British – is different. Avant-garde music,

the continuation of classical music, is based on “a system of priorities which sets up

ordered relationships between its components, and where one thing is defined in terms

of its opposite […]: high/low, rise/fall, fast/slow […]” (Nyman, 1974: 27); in this

system every element has a specific function in the overall form of a work and “the

identity of a composition is of paramount importance” (Nyman, 1974: 9). In

experimental music, according to Nyman, all the opposites might occur spontaneously,

and the idea of a climax which is central to the concept of form is no longer important.

The identity of an experimental composition is fluid, since any two performances are

essentially very different from each other. After all, according to Cage, an experimental

act is “an act the outcome of which is unknown” (Cage, 1961: 13).

Björn Heile, however, disapproves of the binary opposition Nyman creates

between European and Anglo-American music, especially since Nyman’s distinction

appears initially derived from the composers’ nationalities rather than the characteristics

of their music. Heile claims that there have been more examples of European composers

Page 36: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

36

writing experimental music than Nyman admits, and that the latter’s approach is

ethnocentric and “essentializes national traditions” (Heile, 2004b: 175). In his book

about Kagel’s music, he mentions three uses of the idea of experiment in music: the first

has to do with the scientific meaning of the word and is applied to computer or

electronic music; the second has to do with Cage’s definition of an experimental act

mentioned above, and consequently is closer to Nyman’s use of the term; and the last

one refers “to the tendency of the avant-garde to explore hitherto unknown territory”

(Heile, 2006: 69). Both the second and the third uses of the word “experiment” are

relevant to Kagel’s work, according to Heile.

Although I find Nyman’s book very enlightening in terms of the aesthetics and

characteristics of what he terms experimental music, I also believe that it is simplistic to

distinguish two very important traditions of the twentieth century on grounds of

geography. Furthermore, I find Heile’s use of the term more inclusive: whereas Nyman

tends to exclude much music that has elements of experimentalism, Heile provides a

more general view of the term, which I find more accurate, as it reflects its vast use in

musicology since the mid-twentieth century to refer to works and genres which are very

different from each other. For the purposes of this dissertation, I will refer to some

specific genres within the vast field of experimental music, which seem to be related to

the concept of Ludwig van: in these genres, the composer employs ways in which some

elements of the performance are left either to the performer’s discretion, or to chance.

Although, according to the The New Grove dictionary, both cases belong to the wide

concept of aleatory, I will use the term chance music to refer to music which is

composed using chance operations, and indeterminate music only for compositions

which leave decisions to be made by the performer, those that Cage, in his lecture on

indeterminacy, refers to as “indeterminate with respect to [their] performance” (Cage,

1961: 35-40).

Chance music stems from a concept which is essentially Cagean: the elimination

of the composer’s intention and his/her conscious or unconscious intervention in the

sound world. Influenced by Zen Buddhism, Cage wanted to eliminate any trace of

subjectivity from his music. The first work he composed in this manner is Music of

Changes (1951) for solo piano; Cage devised a technique with which he determined the

content of the piece by tossing coins and interpreting the results according to the I

Page 37: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

37

Ching, or Book of Changes. But the chance procedures in Music of Changes were all

employed in the process of composing it; this work is not indeterminate with respect to

performance:

That the Music of Changes was composed by means of chance operations identifies the composer with no matter what eventuality. But that its notation is in all respects determinate does not permit the performer any such identification: his work is specifically laid out before him (Cage, 1961: 36).

Most of Cage’s works after Music of Changes involved some chance operations in their

composition; some notable examples are Williams Mix (1952) for tape, in which he used

chance techniques “to dictate how the tape should be cut, spliced together and combined

(Nyman, 1974: 48) and Imaginary Landscape no.4 (1951) for 12 radios, where he used

similar operations “to determine the loudness levels, durations and station tunings on

the 12 radios” (Nyman, 1974: 62).

In indeterminate music (indeterminate with respect to its performance), there are

certain aspects which are not determined in the score and which are, usually

deliberately, left to the discretion of the performer, who either has to make conscious

decisions beforehand, or react to the score spontaneously during the performance. The

aspects left undetermined can be various: for example, Cage argues that The Art of the

Fugue is an indeterminate composition, since the “timbre and amplitude [apparently

“amplitude” signifies sound volume in Cage’s writings] characteristics of the material”

(Cage, 1961: 35) are not given; in Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI, the sequence of its

parts, and thus the overall form, is indeterminate; Morton Feldman’s Intersection 3

leaves more to the discretion of the performer, since the pitches and durations are only

vaguely determined within limits, and the amplitude is completely free; Earle Brown’s

graphic score December 1952, in the collection entitled Folio, determines very little,

since it is a drawing of rectangles of different sizes which can be interpreted in various

ways.

Finally, one division of indeterminate composition which might be relevant to

this dissertation – since Ludwig van’s score is preceded by a series of instructions which

can be argued to be more important than the score itself – is the text score, sometimes

referred to as prose or verbal score. In this the means the composer uses to communicate

Page 38: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

38

with the performer consists of text, instead of conventional notation. The text can be

quite straightforward, as in La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 no.5, which requires

that a butterfly (or any number of butterflies) be released in the performance area, or

rather abstract, as in George Brecht’s Two Durations (1961), in which the text consist of

two words:

red

green

Text scores are more often associated with Fluxus artists, such as George Maciunas,

Yoko Ono and the two mentioned above. But other composers, even members of the

avant-garde, have also composed scores which consist only of words, a notable example

being Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen (1968), a collection of fifteen text

compositions which resemble poems. Stockhausen calls this work “intuitive music” as it

asks the performers not to follow a specific score or any given rules, but their intuition.

The aim of this section has been to present three types of experimental

composition which appear relevant to the score of Ludwig van, and certainly not to

cover the very wide field of experimental music. The relation Ludwig van bears with

these types of composition and the question whether it can be placed in any of these

categories remain to be examined in section IV.3.A.

Page 39: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

39

B. Performance of indeterminate music

It is evident that, in music which is indeterminate with regard to its performance, since

certain matters are left undetermined by the score, there are issues which arise

concerning the role of the performer. He/she is not merely a mediator between the

composer and the audience, someone whose principal aim is to convey the composer’s

“message” or “intention” as accurately as possible; on the contrary, he/she has a

separate role in the actual shaping of the music, since the music’s “content”, and not

only its “interpretation”, depends on his/her actions. In order to discuss the performer’s

function in such music, I believe we should first identify two separate tendencies within

indeterminate music. In the first category, which, according to Griffiths (Griffiths, 2001:

346), is generally more of a European tendency, the reason for leaving aspects of a work

undetermined in the score is in order to give some freedom of choice to the performer.

In the second, which is mostly associated with Cage and his followers, what the

composer aims for is the absence of subjectivity. Although, as I argued earlier, I believe

the geographical distinction to be somewhat simplistic, I will make use of Griffiths’

categorisation between works that aim to leave some of their aspects to chance and

works that encourage the performer to make some of the decisions. It has to be noted

that these two categories are not very distinct from each other and that there are works

which can be argued to be a combination of the two; and this is why I will use the term

“tendencies” rather than “categories” when referring to them.

A very common example of the first tendency is Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata

(1955-57/63), in which the performer is free to rearrange the order of its movements,

and their materials, at will. In other works, such as Stockhausen’s intuitive

compositions, mentioned before, the performers are basically asked to play without a

score, following their intuition while being aware of the sounds the rest of the ensemble

is making. But whether it is conscious decisions or intuition that is being required,

works of this category encourage the subjectivity of the performer: by not determining

all the aspects of his/her work, the composer invites the performer to be more present in

the creative process. At the same time, according to Griffiths, “the composition is still

the product of an individual mind”, and “the performer has still to realise the

composer’s intentions” (Griffiths, 2001: 346); the aesthetics of this kind of

indeterminate composition are very far from Cage’s ideals of non-intention, since the

Page 40: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

40

target of such scores is not music generated by chance, but the blurring of more than

one person’s individual creativities into one work.

On the contrary, works which are characteristic of the other tendency carry

further the ideals of chance composition. This can happen by asking the performer to

carry out the chance operations themselves, as for example in Cage’s Variations II

(1962): its score is generated by the performer by throwing eleven transparent sheets

marked with straight lines or dots onto a surface and interpreting the result through a

complicated process instructed by the composer. Another way is by asking them to

follow very specific processes while performing the piece; an example would be

Christian Wolff’s Duo for Pianists (1958), in which the actions of each pianist depend,

to a great extent, on what the other pianist is doing. Thus “it is an entirely self-contained

score with absolutely no need to refer to external sources, performance practices or

analysis to execute this work perfectly well” (Thomas, 2009: 81). In other words, this

kind of music seeks to avoid any cultural references or any source of subjectivity: the

only requirement is for the performer to carry out the instructions of the composition,

without trying to follow any style, performance practice or allowing his/her individual

expression into the performance.

It is difficult to talk about a performance practice tradition of indeterminate

music. Firstly because it is a relatively new genre, and there have not been enough

performances of indeterminate works to create different schools or tendencies followed

by several performers. Secondly because, due to its very nature, each and every

performer approaches it in different ways, and the performances each work receives

may be very different from each other even if it is the same person performing; for sure

performances by different people are bound to be even more different. Moreover, the

issue of the performance practice of indeterminate music is inextricably linked to the

work of one single performer, David Tudor, who worked closely with several

composers of experimental music, most notably Cage, Wolff and Feldman, and played a

very important role in the realisation, but also in the conception of such music.

The most interesting thing about the way Tudor approached the indeterminate

scores he was to perform is the way he prepared his realisations. According to John

Holzaepfel, up to the early 1950’s he always played experimental – but not

Page 41: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

41

indeterminate – music from the composer’s scores or even their manuscripts

(Holzaepfel, 2002b: 176 and 2002a: 161). But after playing Feldman’s indeterminate

Intersection 2 in the same manner and not being satisfied with the result, he started to

undertake “a series of rigorous preparatory steps, including measurements,

computations, conversion tables – whatever he found useful to the task – whose result

he translated into a more or less conventional notation for his own use in performance”

(Holzaepfel, 2002b: 176). In some cases, his involvement with the creative process was

so significant that he has been argued to surpass the boundaries between the roles of

performer and composer: James Pritchett, for instance, regards Tudor’s realisation of

Cage’s Variations II as a composition in its own right (Pritchett, 2004: 16); Tudor on

the other hand, talking about the same realisation, says

“Well, when you go that far, then in a sense you are co-composer. However, I still would be unable to call myself a co-composer. I call it my electronic version and I give my name as its being my version” (quoted in Kuivila, 2004: 20)

Although Tudor has largely been considered the indisputable expert in the field

of experimental music performance and despite his being admired by Cage, Feldman

and other experimental composers, there has also been some criticism of his approach

towards indeterminate music. Philip Thomas, for example, argues that since “Cage’s

priorities, like those of Feldman, were mostly concerned with the liberation of sounds

and the unrepeatability of musical events” (Thomas, 2007: 133), it is important that at

least certain aspects of the performance should remain to be determined at the time of

performance. In his own performances of Cage’s Music for Piano, he plans the

pedalling, the articulation and the approximate durations in advance using chance

methods, and leaves the dynamics free to be decided during each performance itself. He

admits that by this he might let matters of taste interfere with the performance, but

argues that his general awareness of Cage’s music helps him avoid the clichés of

improvisation, which would be against Cage’s self-less approach (Thomas, 2007: 133-

4). It is interesting, however, that in another source Thomas seems to contradict his own

method, since he claims that experimental scores are self-sufficient and do not require

the performer to have any previous knowledge of the genre:

My argument from the performer’s perspective is that music which could be said to be ‘experimental’ requires a stylistically non-interventionist approach, whereby performers respond to the demands of the score, without reference to any external

Page 42: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

42

stylistic code, and focus upon the production of sound within the parameters of the score (Thomas, 2009: 91).

Since he believes that experimental music should be performed without reference to any

stylistic code and only following the requirements of the score, in my opinion he should

not rely on his knowledge of Cage’s music in order to avoid bringing his taste into his

performance; on the contrary, he should be in favour of Tudor’s approach, since the

latter, by determining all aspects of his performance using chance methods, managed to

exclude his personal choices from it, even if it is at the expense of the unrepeatability of

performance. Of course, Thomas seems to argue that the fact that he lets some aspects

of the music be determined through his knowledge of Cage’s music and its performance

practice does not mean that he embraces personal choice; but, all the same, being a

performer myself, I believe that it is impossible to exclude personal taste from a

performance which is shaped in this way; I believe that Tudor’s tactic of determining

everything using chance techniques before the actual performance is a much safer way

of avoiding to make any personal choices when performing this kind of music.

In any case, this conflict clearly has to do with works of the second tendency

mentioned earlier in this section, the one which is based on the ideals of chance music

and aims to avoid any trace of subjectivity, both that of the composer and that of the

performer. And for works that belong to this tendency it is important to avoid

improvisation, personal choices or stylistic codes in favour of chance. But my view is

that, following Griffiths, not all indeterminate music is against subjectivity: in works

that belong to the first tendency described earlier, it is important for the performer to

make personal choices and take an active part in the conception of the musical content

of a performance. As I will argue in Chapter IV.3.A, I believe that Kagel’s Ludwig van

belongs to that tendency.

Page 43: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

43

C. Kagel and experimentalism

As I mentioned in section II.2.A, Heile believes that experimentalism can be traced in

Kagel’s work in two different ways: the first has to do with Cage’s definition of an

experiment as “an act the outcome of which is unknown”, and therefore refers to a more

“American” idea of experimentalism; the second relates to “the tendency of the avant-

garde to explore hitherto unknown territory” (Heile, 2006: 69), which is a more

“European” tendency. According to Heile, “Kagel was well placed to link both these

conceptions of experimentalism” (Heile, 2006: 69), being an important part of the

Darmstadt school who also embraced Cage’s ideas more warmly than other composers.

Kagel’s interest in Cage’s work and the American school, Heile claims, was related to

Kagel’s break with Stockhausen around the same time in the late 1960s (Heile, 2006:

70).

Kagel’s first work that was clearly influenced by American experimentalism was

Transición II (1959), for pianist, percussionist – who only plays on the body and the

strings of the piano – and tape recorders. The work consists of 21 sections the order of

which is to be decided before the performance following very complicated and

meticulous rules; its score varies from absolutely conventional writing to clusters and

graphic notation; and the tapes play material from the piece itself, either recorded before

or during the performance. Another such work is Metapiece (Mimetics) (1961) for

piano, in which the page order is also free under certain limitations, and whose score

consists of very little material – chords and groups of notes – and very general

instructions as to how to use it: as with many of Cage’s works, it is almost impossible to

play it from Kagel’s score – the pianist has to “compose” their own version of it to

make it possible to perform it. In Prima Vista (1964), for slide pictures and undefined

sound sources, the score consists only of slide projections: the performers –

“instruments, voices, props, mechanical or electrical sound generators, loudspeakers,

objects etc. can be used along with unusual mutes, bows, or drumsticks” (Kagel, 1971:

7) – are divided into two (or more) ensembles and each ensemble is performing what

they see in the slides which are being projected by the other ensemble. As the order of

the slides and the duration of each slide are completely free, each ensemble cannot be

prepared for the “score” they are supposed to perform, since the “score” is actually

generated during the performance by a person from the other ensemble. Thus, a

Page 44: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

44

performance of this work is truly an experimental action, according to Cage’s definition,

since there is no way it can be prepared: every time it is performed, its outcome is

unknown.

As for works which can be characterised experimental in a more avant-garde

way, which, in other words, experiment with unknown territory and new material, one

of the examples Heile mentions is Music for renaissance instruments (1966), in which

early instruments are played in the most unorthodox ways, using extended techniques

and treating them as objets trouvés (Heile, 2006: 75). Another example is Camera

Oscura (1965), chromatic play for lighting with actors: visually, its score could be taken

for a graphic score for instrumentalists, judging from the signs it contains and from its

layout; but there is no live music involved – the score describes the movements of the

actors, the volume of the loudspeakers, and the movements, colours and intensity of the

spotlights. Other works which can be labelled experimental in the same sense are: Pas

de Cinq (1965), a “walking scene” in which the only sound produced on stage is that of

the steps of five actors walking on a floor “covered with the most varied kinds of

materials, for example sheets of metal, plastic and wood, and runners of jute, cloth and

linoleum”, carrying a walking stick (Kagel, 1967b); Ornithologica multiplicata (1968),

where the performers are twenty-five indigenous and forty-five exotic birds, depending

on the area where the performance takes place; and Privat (1968), for lonely listener,

which is not intended for public performance – it is a set of slightly bizarre instructions

for listening in a domestic setting (Heile, 2006: 80).

One of the most important experimental works by Kagel, which, according to

Heile, “sums up Kagel’s approach to experimentalism, as opposed to a Cagean concept”

(Heile, 2006: 79), is Hallelujah (1967) for voices. It consists of various sections, whose

order is free, under some conditions: sixteen solo parts, four for each voice type, each of

which can be sung along with others, but at the same time independently from the

others; eight tutti sections, some of which are conventionally notated, whereas some are

based on graphic scores, and include special uses of the voice; three sections for

speaking chorus in which the performers have to cut out figures from the score and

paste them on chosen texts which they then have to read according to the instructions

written on these figures; three “protest choruses” shouting nonsensical slogans and

imitating animal sounds; one section in which the choristers have to sing while blowing

Page 45: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

45

into pan pipes; and a solo for a female voice to be performed at the end. Heile believes

that Hallelujah exemplifies the difference between Kagel’s and Cage’s ideas on

experimentalism:

[T]he relinquishing of control on Kagel’s part and the emphasis placed on performers’ cooperation in developing and presenting a version of the piece are not ornamental but part of the essence of the work. However, this is not at the service of the renunciation of communication, expression or the subjectivity of the composer: on the contrary, the work is clearly meant to engage with the dialectics between individualism and institutionalization of religious experience, although Kagel does not formulate an unequivocal ‘message’ and different versions of the piece may emphasize different aspects. Paradoxically, it is thus the piece’s openness and – restricted – indeterminacy which communicate Kagel’s intention (Heile, 2006: 79-80).

Thus, whereas in Cage’s music indeterminacy mainly serves as a way to abolish the

subjectivity of the composer, in Kagel’s case it is a way to encourage the musicians’

active involvement in the performance and to communicate his own intention.

Kagel’s most experimental period, as is the case with many composers of his

time, was the 1960s. From the early 1970s he started engaging more with musical

tradition, in works such as the ones mentioned in section II.1.C. Some of his works from

the late 1960s and early 1970s seem to combine these two tendencies. Staatstheater

(1967-1971) is a very good example of this: at the same time as a critique of the whole

tradition of musical theatre, as I argue in section II.1.C, it is a highly experimental work:

the “instruments” used most of the time are actually any kind of sound-producing

objects, the parts are to be played in any order or simultaneously, or to be omitted, and

almost none of the parts is in conventional notation. Another work which clearly stands

between these two tendencies in Kagel’s output is Ludwig van: it is a work that treats

traditional musical material in an experimental way.

Page 46: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

46

Chapter III

Ludwig van: Ein Bericht

The subject of this chapter will be Kagel’s film Ludwig van: Ein Bericht (Ludwig van: a

report), which was commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Köln, on the

occasion of the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, and filmed between

23 September and 9 October 1969. The film received its first screening on 28 May 1970

in the Wiener Künstlerhaus and its first television broadcast on 1 June 1970 by WDR.

In the first section I will give a brief description of each of the film’s sequences; apart

from the action, I will mention the music used, all of which is actually by Beethoven,

but most of which was elaborated by Kagel in very remarkable ways. In the next section

I will discuss the ways in which Kagel manipulated Beethoven’s music, as well as its

role in the film. Following that, I will discuss certain issues that Kagel raises through

this film, which have more to do with Beethoven’s reception in the centuries after his

death than with his life and works. Finally, the last section will be about the film’s

reception by audiences and critics in West and East Germany.

Page 47: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

47

1. “Plot” of the film – Musical materials

In this section, I will present the sequences of the film one by one and I will give a brief

summary of each of them, mentioning the music used in it. In the course of this

summary I will include brief commentaries on some of its elements, found mainly in the

secondary sources concerning the film.

The film, according to an early sketch by Kagel, is divided into two parts

(Holsträter, 2004: 112-3). In the first one (chapters 1-10), Beethoven is depicted coming

back to his birthplace, Bonn, in 1970, strolling around the city, visiting his house which

has been turned into a museum and embarking on a boat trip on the Rhine. The second

one (chapters 11-20) consists of independent scenes, parodies of television programmes,

commenting on Beethoven’s reception. The following account of the plot and the

musical materials of the film will be divided in chapters according to the DVD of

Ludwig van (Kagel, 2007)5 and then subdivided into the sequences of the film according

to the script.

5 This division does not correspond to the division of the sequences of the film according to the script. The reason I chose to use the division according to the DVD of Ludwig van is because the sequences in the script do not appear in the order in which they are to be found in the film, and because some of them do not appear in the film at all. Therefore, in the course of the discussion of the film, I will use the word “chapter” to refer to the division according to the DVD and the word “sequence” to refer to the script’s division.

Page 48: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

48

Chapter 1 (0.00-0.53): Stefan Wewerka Shaving

• Sequence not in film script (0.00-0.53)

Action: The first sequence of the film is the first of a series of statements

regarding the Beethoven year that Kagel asked the artists with whom he collaborated to

make. It depicts Stefan Wewerka shaving and mumbling the words “Beethoven…

Bummelei… Bumserei” (Bummelei means dawdling, idling; as for Bumserei, it does not

exist as a word, but it alludes to the verb bumsen, which is a term of German slang for

having sex), and other seemingly nonsensical words coming from an improvisation on

the word “Beethovenrummel” (Beethoven-hype) (Holsträter, 2004: 112).

Sound: No music, the only sounds are that of the electric shaver Wewerka uses,

and of course that of his voice.

Chapter 2 (0.53-13.16): Beethoven's Arrival in Bonn

• Sequence AN (0.53-1.05): Broadcasters

Action: This is a sequence whose scenes appear several times in the film. Kagel

had twelve people – aged over 65 and with very wrinkled faces, according to the script

– read typical television broadcaster phrases, as if they were introducing television

programmes on Beethoven.

Sound: First movement of the Piano Sonata, op.57 (Appassionata), broadcaster’s

voice: “May it go from heart to heart”, from Beethoven’s inscription on his Missa

Solemnis.

• Sequence BA (1.05-2.34): Bonn Railway Station

Action: Beethoven is shown getting off the D-Zug – which goes from Vienna to

Hoek van Holland, the land of his ancestors (Klüppelholz, 1981: 12) – in Bonn. His face

is never actually shown, as it is supposed to be him behind the camera, inviting the

spectators to identify themselves with it and therefore to get involved in the film,

according to Christiane Hillebrand (Hillebrand, 1996: 194).

Sound: The only sound as Beethoven gets out of the train is the first movement

of the Piano Sonata, op.57 (Appassionata); when that stops, there is no sound

whatsoever, although he is in a station full of people. This probably refers to the idea of

Beethoven as a deaf person who can only hear music inside his head. In addition, it

Page 49: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

49

makes it clear that not only do we experience the film with Beethoven’s eyes, but we

also hear with his ears.

• Sequence BB (2.34-4.12): Beethoven’s Ramble (Bonn and Köln)

Action: Beethoven gets out of the station and strolls through the city. According

to the script, Kagel expects a cameraman dressed up in 19th-century clothes to attract the

attention of passers-by, and this proves true in the film: people’s faces look bewildered

as if they were actually seeing Beethoven in the streets of Bonn.

Sound: A strange performance of the Scherzo from the Ninth Symphony is

heard: the instrumentation is that of a salon orchestra, as in Kagel’s Stücke der

Windrose of 1988-94 (Holsträter, 2003: 77-8), and the performance is out of tune and

unsynchronised. The source of the sound is not visible on screen, apart from one point

when Beethoven passes by a street musician, who plays the zither along with the

recording.

• Sequence BC (4.12-7.55): Record Shop/Electrola

Action: In the first part of this sequence, Beethoven arrives at a record shop

where several discs of his major works are displayed and lots of motionless people are

listening to them through telephone speakers, as was the practice in the late 1960s. The

second part takes place at the factory of the record company Electrola in Köln and

shows scenes from the manufacture of records.

Sound: In the first part of this sequence we are still hearing the Scherzo from the

Ninth Symphony, as in the previous sequence. The difference is that, as soon as

Beethoven enters the shop, the music sounds distorted and flat, as if we were also

hearing it through telephone speakers, like the people in the shop (Heile, 2006: 102). In

the second part the music heard is an orchestrated version of the Andante espressivo

(The Absence) from the Piano Sonata, op.81a (Les Adieux).

• Sequence Beethovenhaus Bonn (Bonngasse 20) (7.55-11.30)

Action: Beethoven is shown arriving at his birthplace. The person who opens the

door for him is the “Fremdenführer” (guide) of the museum, who “exhibits a

resemblance with another German ‘Führer’ of unfortunate memory” (Klüppelholz,

1981: 12) and who looks quite puzzled when he sees Beethoven. The sequence that

Page 50: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

50

follows shows various objects from the collection of the Beethovenhaus, such as death

masks, ear trumpets, as well as some austere busts of Beethoven.

Sound: In the beginning of this sequence, the Leonore Overture No.3, op.72b, is

played by an ensemble featuring very prominent wind and brass instruments and piano,

whereas afterwards the opening of the Piano Sonata, op.28, is heard, in an orchestration

that might be described as alluding to light music.

• Sequence not in film script (11.30-13.16): Wine cellar

Action: The Fremdenführer leads us to the wine cellar of Beethoven’s family,

which, as he says, was discovered recently. This is the beginning of a tour in an

imaginary Beethovenhaus, whose rooms were constructed by Joseph Beuys, Ursula

Burghardt, Robert Filliou, Dieter Roth, Rudolf Rieser, Stefan Wewerka and Kagel

himself. Apart from the latter, the rest were fine artists of the time, all of whom were

associated with Fluxus, an artistic movement of the 1960s with Neo-Dada influences, in

which Kagel was involved for part of his life. The wine cellar was created by Joseph

Beuys.

Sound: The only sound in this sequence is the voice of the Fremdenführer

presenting the wine cellar.

Chapter 3 (13.16-16.51): Fire Drain and Kitchen in the Beethoven House (Joseph

Beuys)

• Title Sequence (13.16-14.34): Burning Drain

Action: This is one of two actions-statements Joseph Beuys did on the

Beethoven Year. It depicts fire coming out of a street drain, until it is covered by a

kitchen pot lid.

Sound: Opening of the Ninth Symphony, amateurish instrumentation and

performance.

• Sequence KU (14.34-16.19): Kitchen of the Beethovenhaus

Action: The Fremdenführer shows various elements in the kitchen of the

Beethovenhaus, constructed by Joseph Beuys.

Sound: Same as previous sequence.

Page 51: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

51

• Sequence not in film script (16.19-16.51): Totenmaske Napoleons

Action: This is the second statement by Beuys, called Napoleon’s death mask.

From within the kitchen, we see the artist out of the window, staring into the kitchen

while wearing Napoleon’s death mask.

Sound: The only sound here is Beuys’ voice making his characteristic “ö ö”

sound, of which he says:

“ö ö is simply the language without content. Just the carrier wave. The language without a conceptual implantation of a concept, like the animals emit their noises. A simple expression of an inner emotion is imitated by the ö ö, which is the roar of a stag” (Kramer, 1991: 20).

Chapter 4 (16.51-22.22): Bathroom, Beethoven Busts Made of Lard and Chocolate

(Dieter Roth)

• Sequence TO (16.51-22.22): Toilet and Bathroom of the Beethovenhaus

Action: This sequence takes place in the bathroom, where about a hundred busts

of the composer, made of lard and chocolate, are floating in the bathtub. Beethoven’s

hand takes several of them out of the water one by one, more and more disfigured to

horrific effect, and finally gives some coins to the Fremdenführer. Subsequently, a view

through the bathroom window down to the pavement is shown, where Dieter Roth and

Rudolf Rieser are smashing and sweeping away more Beethoven busts. That, according

to the script, is Dieter Roth’s statement on the Beethoven Year.

Sound: In the first part of this sequence the Fremdenführer seems to be talking,

but all we can hear is the cantabile and expressive last movement of the Piano Sonata,

op.109, played by a string ensemble. In the second part, a nonsensical series of words

starting with B, or made to start with B, is recited: Brobert, Bdorothy, Beer,

Bamsterdam, Beer van Bschnapps, BP are only a few examples. Finally the phrase

“Gute Nacht” (good night) is repeated several times and fades out.

Page 52: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

52

Chapter 5 (22.22-25.34): Living Room of the Beethoven House (Ursula Burghardt)

• Sequence WO (22.22-24.48): Living room of the Beethovenhaus

Action: The next room is the living room, made by Ursula Burghardt, where all

the furniture is crowded together narrowly and plated with aluminium, as “an act of

multiple musealisation” (from the film script).6 The Fremdenführer sits in an armchair

and reads Beethovens äußere Erscheinung (Beethoven’s External Appearance, Leipzig,

1905), an extensive study by Theodor von Frimmel, who “has treated in an exhaustive

and masterly manner the whole subject of Beethoven’s personal appearance” (Speyer,

1913: 169).

Sound: The Arietta from the second movement of the Piano Sonata, op.111, is

played here. The first phrase is played by the strings sul ponticello, the second by the

winds, the third by the guitar and the piano, and the last one by the brass instruments.

• Sequence KI (24.48-25.34): Children’s room of the Beethovenhaus

Action: Beethoven moves to the children’s room where “all props and pieces of

furniture of this scene are altered in such a way that no square angle occurs in the entire

construction […] The children’s room is to reflect Beethoven’s damaged environment,

the moral gloominess of the late 18th century”, according to the film script. Beethoven’s

feet are shown through a mirror of the room, giving the impression that they are doing

some kind of slow and awkward dance.

Sound: The theme from the Diabelli Variations, op.120, again in an amateurish

instrumentation.

Chapter 6 (25.34-32.33): Music Room (Mauricio Kagel)

• Sequence MZ (25.34-32.33): Music Room

The music room is probably the most important part of the house: in it all the

surfaces, even of the smallest props, are covered in Beethoven's music. According to

Holsträter, the inspiration for this room lies in the works of the Czech artist Jiří Kolář,

whose collages of musical notes on statues and surfaces Kagel must have seen in

exhibitions (Holsträter, 2003: 83). Initially Kagel invited Kolář to realise the room, but

6 The term Kagel uses is Musealisierung, whose English translation seems to be conservation, but I think musealisation is closer to the German word in meaning. More discussion on the concept of musealisation is to be found in section III.3.A.

Page 53: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

53

apparently the latter did not manage to obtain an exit permit from Czechoslovakia

(Holsträter, 2003: 84), therefore Kagel decided to construct the room himself. Holsträter

believes that there is a basic difference between Kolář’s collage technique and the way

Kagel applied it in the music room: the fragments of Kolář’s collages are very small,

most often being fragments consisting of individual notes, which bear no semantic or

syntactic meaning, whereas Kagel uses particles of such a size that they are endowed

with limited units of sense (Sinneinheiten) (Holsträter. 2003: 87). In this respect,

Kagel’s collage reminds us more of Wolf Vostell’s “de-coll/ages”, where an everyday

image is torn apart and blended with fragments of other pictures. Nevertheless, this

parallel still does not seem to be adequate: the context from which Vostell draws the

particles for his de-coll/ages is much wider than that of Kagel, who only recombines

fragments of Beethoven’s music, a technique that Holsträter calls “de-de-coll/age”, as

opposed to Vostell’s de-coll/age (Holsträter, 2003: 97). On the other hand, Kagel

himself uses another term to refer to this technique: in his interview with Karl Faust, he

introduces the term “metacollage” as a more suitable name for the music room collage,

because all the fragments used are from the same source (Kagel, 1970: VIII).

Action: In the first part of this sequence, Beethoven’s eyes – and, subsequently,

the spectators’ eyes – run over the surfaces of the room from such a close distance that

the notes can actually be read. In the second part we see more general views of the

room, in which several life-size two-dimensional paperboard figures of Haydn, Mozart

and Beethoven are to be found.

Sound: The music played in the first part of this sequence is actually the music

that is shown on the screen. It seems that Beethoven is hearing the music imprinted on

the surfaces of the room “through his inner ear” (Holsträter, 2003: 83). In order to do

that, Kagel made his chamber ensemble record the music in front of a screen,

interpreting a “kinetic note-text” (Holsträter, 2003: 87), i.e. the constantly moving score

created by the moving camera – Beethoven’s eyes – in the music room. In the second

part, as the camera wanders through the paperboard figures of the three composers, we

hear the first movement of the Piano Sonata, op.27 no.2 (Moonlight Sonata).

Page 54: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

54

Chapter 7 (32.33-34.24): Lumber Room of the Beethoven House (Robert Filliou)

• Sequence RU (32.33-34.24): Lumber Room of the Beethoven House

Action: The Fremdenführer climbs the stairs to the lumber room of the

Beethovenhaus. As he opens the door, a huge pile of volumes falls to the floor, and as

he picks them up we see that they are all music scores by composers who lived after

Beethoven, thus creating an interesting inversion of time.

Sound: Still the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Only when the scores

fall to the floor, all the instruments play downward glissandos creating a chaotic effect.

Chapter 8 (34.24-37.01): Garden and Washhouse (Ursula Burghardt)

• Sequence GA (34.24-37.01): Garden and yard of the Beethovenhaus

Action: The last sequence of the Beethovenhaus takes place in the garden,

designed by Ursula Burghardt, which is “equipped with numerous washing lines, so that

pieces of laundry and clothing might be hung up in an abundance such as if in this space

the immense washing fury of past centuries would convene” (from the film script). A

number of people are guided by the Fremdenführer through the clothes and sheets, on

which moral sayings of the 19th century are sewn, such as “Der Mensch muss sich selbst

bezwingen” (Man has to control himself). Several pages of Beethoven’s music are also

left to dry amongst the laundry.

Sound: Sound of flowing water, orchestrated versions of the Prestissimo from

the Piano Sonata, op.109, as well as the Kreuzersonate for violin, op.47.

Chapter 9 (37.01-38.12): Rhinepromenade Near Bonn

• Sequence not in film script (37.01-38.12)

Action: Beethoven leaves the house and walks towards the shore of the Rhine.

On the way he meets some children in the park who look at him in a mixture of fear and

curiosity.

Sound: Leonore Overture No.3, op.72b.

Page 55: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

55

Chapter 10 (38.12-44.33): Shipping With Orchestra

• Sequence S: Rhine journey (38.12-44.33)

Action: Beethoven boards a ship called Cecilie (probably an allusion to Saint

Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians) and embarks on a strange journey along the river:

he keeps hearing music around him, but whenever he tries to find its source, the

musicians seem to escape, as if he is chasing ghosts, or as if they are playing hide and

seek with him. Later he becomes the audience of a shadow theatre where the musicians’

shadows march in front of him one by one, playing the Marcia Funebre sulla Morte

d'un Eroe from the Piano Sonata, op.26.

Sound: The Leonore Overture and the Piano Sonata, op.7, in the “hide and seek”

scene. Later the Marcia Funebre, as mentioned above. It is a very special performance

of this work, since the musicians’ shadows are shown through a round window, one by

one, and each time it is the instrument that the person behind the window is playing that

is also more amplified in the sound track. For instance, when a bassoonist is marching

in front of the window, the listener’s attention is caught by the specific motive that the

bassoon is playing at that very moment, as if the players are not only passing by the

window, but also in front of an amplifying microphone. This is a fascinating practice:

Kagel changes the focus on a specific and unchanging orchestration merely by changing

the recording level for each instrument, as if casting light on different details at each

moment.

Chapter 11 (44.33-55.50): Internationaler Frühschoppen

• Sequence AN (44.33-45.38): Broadcasters

Action: (See sequence AN in chapter 2 of the film) First broadcaster is talking

but is not heard; second broadcaster is rubbing his face and ears for a long time.

Sound: Still from the previous sequence, the Marcia Funebre sulla Morte d'un

Eroe from the Piano Sonata, op.26.

Page 56: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

56

• Sequence IF (45.38-55.50): Internationaler Frühschoppen

Action: This sequence is a recreation of a talk-show of the Westdeutscher

Rundfunk, hosted by Werner Höfer, called “Internationaler Frühschoppen”.7 The guests

are five musical commentators from different countries, one of whom is actually Kagel

himself, and they are supposed to talk about the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.

Initially they are trying to come up with ideas of exactly what they are going to say,

supposedly before the programme is on air, and then they decide to concentrate on the

question of whether Beethoven is misused (missbraucht) in the world.

This is another very notable sequence of the film: on one hand, because it is the

only sequence where views concerning the film’s main topics are heard; on the other

hand, because we cannot tell whether Kagel shares some or none of these views, as the

whole discussion is carried out on an ironic, even surreal level, and some of it is

evidently sheer nonsense. A number of views concerning Beethoven’s “misuse” by

bourgeois society, famous performers and politicians are heard: most importantly,

Heinz-Klaus Metzger expresses his views on the false interpretation of Beethoven’s

music, which are to be found in his controversial article “Zur Beethoven-Interpretation”

(on Beethoven interpretation, Metzger, 1970: 5-8). He accuses bourgeois society of

sending its classics to the dogs, by treating them as pop icons and criticises Herbert von

Karajan for the way he conducts the composer’s symphonies, depriving them of their

negative quality.8 All of these subjects are just presented and not developed or

discussed, and the show is brought to an abrupt end when the host proposes that they all

drink to Beethoven.

Sound: Discussion, in the beginning not synchronised with the image.

Chapter 12 (55.50-59.06): Beethoven's Descendant in the Middle of a Field

• Sequence NA (55.50-58.51): Beethoven’s descendant

Action: A person is being interviewed in a field, in front of an oil refinery

(Klüppelholz, 1981: 14) and claims that he is Beethoven’s only living descendant. He

presents us with a number of documents and objects which, in his opinion, form

positive proof of his statement, although it is very obvious that he is insane.

7 Although there is no direct English translation for Frühschoppen, Richard Toop translates it as “international morning drinks show” in the English subtitles of the film. 8 More discussion on Metzger’s statement in section III.3.

Page 57: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

57

Sound: The descendant’s voice.

• Sequence AN (58.51-59.06): Broadcasters

Action: See sequence AN in chapter 2 of the film.

Sound: The broadcaster’s voice.

Chapter 13 (59.06-1.00.30): Schuldt at the Typewriter

• Sequence SC (59.06-1.00.30): Prof. Schuldt

Action: An academic is typing a scholarly essay on the subject: “Do the

Conversation Books merit a philo-semantic investigation based on their reciprocal

relationship to didactics?”

Sound: Prof. Schuldt’s voice and the sound of the typewriter.

Chapter 14 (1.00.30-1.02.58): Magic With Old Props

• Sequence not in film script (1.00.30-1.01.59, 1.02.17-1.02.30): referred to as

“Handschuhsequenz” (Glove sequence) by Holsträter (Holsträter, 2003: 65)

Action: A gloved hand is shown from above, performing various actions with

small objects on a table.

Sound: An orchestrated version of the Grave from the Piano Sonata, op.13

(Pathétique), is heard. Holsträter provides a thorough analysis of the relation between

image and sound in this sequence and finds it striking that, although fragments of the

music are used in a sort of collage, in this case, unlike in the music room, they retain

their harmonic and functional sense (Holsträter, 2003: 65-74).

• Seqence AN (1.01.59-1.02.17, 1.02.30-1.02.37): Broadcasters

Action: See sequence AN in chapter 2 of the film.

Sound: Initially fragments of the Pathétique are still heard; later only the voice

of the broadcaster.

Page 58: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

58

• Sequence RI (1.02.37-1.02.58): Gutter channel

Action: The camera follows water flowing along a gutter channel into a street

drain.

Sound: An extract from the third movement (Largo) from the Sonata for Flute

and Piano (Anh. 4 in Kinsky’s catalogue of Beethoven’s works, attributed to Beethoven

but not certainly by him), played in a considerably faster tempo.

Chapter 15 (1.02.58-1.04.52): Medical Demonstration Material

• Sequence ME (1.02.58-1.04.33): Medical Institute

Action: A number of items of medical equipment, like a rib cage, hearing aids or

anatomy pictures, move to the rhythm of the music.

Sound: Largo from the Piano Sonata, op.10 no.3, Allegro from the Piano Sonata,

op.81a (Les adieux).

• Sequence MO (1.04.33-1.04.46): Moon Landscape

Action: A miniature eagle (the German emblem) is shown landing on the moon.

Sound: Allegro from the Piano Sonata, op.81a (Les adieux).

• Sequence AN (1.04.46-1.04.52): Broadcasters

Action: See sequence AN in chapter 2 of the film.

Sound: The broadcaster’s voice: “The world has lost its innocence”.

Chapter 16 (1.04.52-1.07.44): Beethoven "In Questa Tomba Oscura" (Carlos Feller,

Bass-Baritone)

• Sequence LI (1.04.52-1.07.44): Lieder soirée Carlos Feller

Action-sound: This sequence is a performance of Beethoven’s song, In questa

tomba oscura, WoO 133, in a setting that reminds us of a “provincial Lieder soirée”

(Klüppelholz, 1981: 15), by a baritone and a pianist, both very solemn and motionless.

“The provincial impression is to be emphasised by clumsy camera placement” (from the

Page 59: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

59

film script). After they finish playing, their music continues to sound as if from far

away. The lyrics of the song are related to the subject of the film in quite a moving way:

In this dark tomb let me rest; you ought, thankless one, to have thought of me, when I lived. Leave at least naked shades to enjoy their peace, and bathe not my ashes with ineffectual venom (by Giuseppe Carpani, translation by George Bird and Richard Stokes, found in Fischer-Dieskau, 1976: 254).

It seems as if Beethoven’s voice is heard after all, commenting on the pointlessness of

tributes and anniversaries, and asking to be left in peace.

Chapter 17 (1.07.44-1.13.07): Laboratory: Piano Playing of the Pianist Klaus

Lindemann

• Sequence KB (1.07.44-1.12.55): Graphs

Action: Klaus Lindemann is shown playing the piano in the grotesque setting of

a laboratory, his limbs connected to strange machines that produce graphs of at least

fifty different variables. “Effective strength”, “blood circulation”, “synchronisation”,

but also “demonic acoustic impressions”, “pianist’s cramp”, “sedatives”, “pleasant

monotony” and “artistic judgment” are only some examples of these variables.

Sound: Largo-Allegro from the Piano Sonata, op.31 no.2 (Tempest), Coriolan

Overture, op.62, arranged for piano.

• Sequence TI (1.10.46-1.12.55): Animal paws (combined with the previous

sequence)

Action: Various animal paws as well as human hands press keys on an enormous

keyboard.

Sound: As in previous sequence.

• Sequence AN (1.12.55-1.13.07): Broadcasters

Action: See sequence AN in chapter 2 of the film.

Sound: Broadcaster’s voice.

Page 60: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

60

Chapter 18 (1.13.07-1.14.45): Props Museum

• Sequence not in film script (1.13.07-1.14.32): Props museum

Action: Various props from different eras are shown, such as a piano, some

furniture and cutlery. They all carry a label with a number on it.

Sound: Variation XX from the Diabelli Variations, op.120, arranged for

orchestra.

• Sequence AN (1.14.32-1.14.45): Broadcasters

Action: See sequence AN in chapter 2 of the film.

Sound: Broadcaster’s voice.

Chapter 19 (1.14.45-1.22.24): Playing of the Famous Pianist Linda Klaudius-Mann

• Sequence Piano Soirée Linda Klaudius-Mann (1.14.45-1.22.24)

Action-sound: Lindemann comes to a stage disguised as the supposedly famous

pianist Linda Klaudius-Mann, an elderly lady conceived as a parody of Elly Ney, a

German pianist who died one year before the film was made, and who was known as a

Beethoven specialist and, interestingly enough, as a supporter of Hitler during the

Second World War (Kater, 1997: 31). She plays the first movement of the Piano Sonata,

op.53 (Waldstein), with strong off-beat accents and extreme tempo changes. Soon she is

joined by an out-of-tune and unsynchronised wind ensemble. In the end she only plays

the two first bars repeated over and over again, while her hair grows more and more

around her and into the piano. Eventually the music is still heard, but instead of playing

she is smoking, until the only thing heard is a repetitive percussive sound, which sounds

like heart beats, or like pressing and releasing a piano pedal.

• Sequence RÖ (1.18.46-1.20.25): X-rays

Action: X-ray images of hands, feet and skulls.

Sound: The same as in the previous sequence.

Page 61: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

61

Chapter 20 (1.20.25-1.28.59). Zoo/Men's Choir of WDR

• Sequence ZO (1.20.25-1.28.59): Zoo

Action: Images of different animals are shown – “elephant, owl, polar bear,

tortoise, boar, many ruminants, predominantly ears and paws” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 15).

Sound: The Prisoners’ chorus (“O Welche Lust”) from Fidelio, the Ode to Joy

from the Ninth Symphony and, in the last few seconds of the film, the opening C major

chords from the Waldstein Sonata, op.53, played by a brass ensemble.

Page 62: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

62

2. The music of the film

A. Manipulation of Beethoven’s works

For the recording of the music of the film, Kagel used a salon orchestra which he

ironically named “Gesamtdeutsches Kammerorchester” (all-German chamber

orchestra). It consisted of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone,

percussion, two violins, viola, cello, double bass, piano and a singer (bass-baritone). All

instruments except for the two violins are present only once, the result of which,

according to Klüppelholz, is “a proportionalisation of the voices among themselves that

pricks up one’s ears” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 15). The fragments of Beethoven’s music that

Kagel chose are mainly from sonatas for piano and some symphonies, particularly the

Ninth, which appears in at least three of the film’s sequences. With the exception of two

sequences, Kagel did not employ collage technique in manipulating his material; he

included long fragments of Beethoven’s music, performed or orchestrated in

unorthodox ways.

• Transformation without collage

Even in the sequences where Kagel did not employ collage technique, he transformed

Beethoven’s music very effectively: he orchestrated piano works, changed the

instrumentation of orchestral ones, or made very unusual performances of them, thus

altering their character very much. His target was that the music would sound “as

Beethoven would still hear it in 1826: pretty badly” (from the film script). The main

issue to which this comment refers is Beethoven’s deafness: Kagel argues that “the idea

was to orchestrate his [Beethoven’s] music in such a way that certain sound ranges and

frequencies that a deaf person hears distorted or not at all would be treated accordingly”

(Kagel, 1975: 83). The other reason why Beethoven was hearing his music badly is the

way it was performed: Kagel claims that, for example, since the Ninth Symphony was

performed after only two rehearsals, the quality of its premiere was probably not good,

compared to 20th-century standards; however, he argues that it must have been more

powerful, since, in this way, the music acquired an exceptional crudeness (Kagel, 1983:

214).

Page 63: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

63

The music of the film exposes both these characteristics. On one hand, the

balance between different instruments is bad: in most cases the middle voices, which are

traditionally considered less important and are kept quiet in most professional

performances, are too loud, as, supposedly, Beethoven might have heard them. On the

other hand, the ensemble very often plays unsynchronised and inaccurately, as if they

are amateur musicians sight-reading difficult works. What is worth noting is that,

according to Kagel, the musicians did not have any problems of conscience playing

Beethoven’s music like this: on the contrary, they felt that they were discovering how

modern his music really was (Kagel, 1983: 214). By performing it in unorthodox ways

and not worrying about the result being “beautiful”, they discovered new qualities in

this music.

The way Kagel manipulates his material brings about the question of authorship.

According to the title sequence, the music of the film is supposed to be by Beethoven,

although many would argue that the way it is performed and manipulated is

disrespectful towards the composer. Is it fair that Kagel claims that the music was by

Beethoven only? And would it not be disgraceful if he had presented the music as his

own, although he did not add a single note to Beethoven’s scores? The music of the film

cannot be attributed to one author: on the contrary, it belongs both to Beethoven and to

Kagel, as the latter did not merely reproduce it, but he rather recomposed it. On the

other hand, apart from the question of authorship – which will be further developed in

section IV.2.B – Kagel also challenges the idea of authenticity, since he argues that the

music of the film sounds the way Beethoven must have heard it. As Alexandre Tharaud

writes, “performing Beethoven’s music as he (mis)heard it makes authenticity turn

against itself, and provides an acid counter-argument to a more orthodox homage,

protesting against listening to Beethoven and performing his work without any critical

or reflective thought” (Tharaud, in the booklet for CD Kagel, 2003). In a way, Kagel’s

versions of Beethoven’s music claim to be even more authentic, closer to Beethoven

himself, than performances that are generally regarded as “faithful” to the text.

• Application of collage technique

As for the collage technique, Kagel uses it in two different ways. One of them,

employed in the “Glove sequence”, does not actually rip the collage fragments out of

their musical context. Kagel takes fragments from the Grave of the Pathétique Sonata

Page 64: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

64

and puts them one after the other in such a way that both the harmonic sequence and the

most important motives of the Grave are still there; the result is a compressed form of

the piece, where all the chords retain their harmonic function and all the motives retain

their character. In this way, Kagel “draws parallels between Beethoven’s motive

technique and the assembling procedure on the editing table (montage)” (Holsträter,

2003: 73). On the other hand, juxtaposing a classically structured and tonal piece of

music with an absolutely nonsensical image, as in this sequence, puts the music out of

context, it makes it not sound so familiar any more. The result could be argued to be a

postmodern synthesis, since this kind of defamiliarisation of an otherwise clear and

common object – in this case, classical harmonic language – is a typically post-modern

practice; as Holsträter says, “this total lack of modern development, combined with the

visual layer and the montage, makes the ‘un’-modern turn to postmodern” (Holsträter,

2003: 74). Therefore, it is not the music itself, nor the image, that gives this sequence a

postmodern quality: it is the combination between a visual layer which alludes to

modern art and an audio recording of a classical composition. This sequence is

postmodern in the sense Charles Jencks gave to the term, that of combining modern and

“un”-modern or traditional elements within one single work (Jencks, 1996: 29).

The second way, manifested in the “Music room” sequence, works in exactly the

opposite manner: the motives used are exclusively from Beethoven’s music, but they

are put together in such a random way that they lose the function they have within

Beethoven’s music in its originally composed form. Consequently, the result could be

regarded as a manifesto of indeterminacy; everything is left to chance – at least if we

take it for granted that Kagel did not have a specific plan for the musical result when he

covered the room in scores. Unfortunately, we do not know what his intentions were at

the time he built the music room, but judging from the photographs of the room which

appear in the score Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven, I have reasons to believe that

he did it in a random way, as I will argue in section IV.1.A. Even so, it is exaggerated to

claim that the music would be completely indeterminate, since there is something that

these motives retain: the personal and stylistic language of Beethoven, if not as far as

harmony or form are concerned, then surely regarding the way he built melodic or

accompanying lines. The intervals that Beethoven uses in his melodies, the types of

accompaniment he uses, the articulation markings he writes, even tonality manifested

within a single line, are only some of the aspects of Beethoven’s musical language still

Page 65: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

65

present in the collage. And this is partly what Kagel means when he characterises

Ludwig van as a metacollage, as opposed to “collage”, or even “de-coll/age”. His aim

was to “assemble as coherent as possible a montage by means of meticulous inbreeding

of more or less familiar pieces without the introduction of alien bodies” (Kagel, 1970:

VIII). Thus, the quotations would not sound like short “familiar” fragments scattered in

a contemporary musical language to distract the listener; on the contrary, the listener

would be left to “concentrate on the substance of the musical context” (Kagel, 1970:

VIII).

Page 66: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

66

B. Role of the music in the film

Concerning the role of the music in the film, it could be argued that it is as varied as the

sequences of the film themselves. Kagel himself claims that there are about sixty

different ways in which image and sound interact in Ludwig van (quoted in Farabet,

Jameux: 1973: 42), although in his notes at the Paul Sacher Foundation there is no

evidence of that. Since there is not enough information on these sixty ways and how

they function, I will organise the interaction between image and sound in three basic

categories, according to my perception as a spectator. The first one will be when the

music follows and comments on the image, a practice that is most common in

conventional films, where the music usually serves as a background for the action; the

second one when it sounds independent from it, as if it makes its own statement which

is irrelevant to or contradicts the image; and finally the third will be when the music

plays the most important role, and it seems that the image is the one that serves the

music.

As an example of the first category, I would highlight the point when a huge

number of music scores fall as the Fremdenführer opens the door of the lumber room

(chapter 7). All the instruments, which were playing the music seen on the walls of the

music room up to that point, suddenly start playing all together, mainly downward

glissandi, creating a chaos, as if representing the notes of all these books which were

released from the lumber room. Another example would be the transition from the

aluminium-plated living room to the children’s room (chapter 5): as the Fremdenführer

moves from the one to the other, the solemn performance of the Arietta from the Piano

Sonata, op.111, fades out and at the same time a grotesque orchestrated version of the

Theme from the Diabelli Variations fades in, in order to highlight the different moods

of the two rooms. Finally, in one of the most remarkable sequences (chapter 4), when

the Fremdenführer takes the disfigured Beethoven busts out of the bathtub, the Theme

and the first variation from the third movement of the Piano Sonata, op.109, is heard:

the music here gives a ritual-like quality to this scene, as if mourning for Beethoven’s

deformed memory.

Many scenes in the first part of the film, in which the image suggests that there

is some kind of sound (such as the noise of the Bonn railway station, or the voice of the

Page 67: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

67

Fremdenführer talking) but all we hear is music, as if we are watching a silent film,

would fall in the second category. Thus, it is also the music, apart from the camera, that

makes us identify ourselves with the deaf Beethoven, who “could hear nothing but his

own music” (Lang, 1970: 513). In the sequence “Bonn Railway Station” (chapter 2),

just after Beethoven steps out of the station, we are confronted with a full body statue of

Beethoven, with the typical grave facial expression and body posture. At the same time,

the Scherzo from the Ninth Symphony starts, in a very pompous performance, but out of

tune and unsynchronised, making the whole scene seem ridiculous. And it is because of

the ironic use of music in this sequence that the grim expression of the statue strikes us

as strange, although we are obviously used to such depictions of Beethoven in statues

and paintings. The final sequence of the film would also be put in this category: the Ode

to Joy certainly has nothing to do with vulgar images of animals in a zoo; it is the

juxtaposition between the primitive image and the divine sound that gives this sequence

a meaning. As for the question of what this meaning would be, it will be discussed in

the next section.

Finally, the music plays the main role in sequences like “Rhine promenade”

(chapter 9), the “Laboratory” (chapter 17) or “Playing of the famous pianist Linda

Klaudius-Mann” (chapter 19). In the first one, it is the music that Beethoven is hearing

that makes him walk around the ship looking for the musicians. In the second, Klaus

Lindemann’s piano playing, as well as each movement of his body while he plays, is

undergoing a scientific examination; it is again certain aspects of the music that are

supposed to be analysed. In the third one, the whole procedure of a piano recital is

commented on through the playing of an exaggerated, yet not entirely unfamiliar,

caricature of a concert pianist.

It is interesting how, as in his previous films, and especially in Duo, Kagel plays

with the concepts of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. There are, for example, several

scenes where the music heard is presumably non-diegetic, as happens usually in

traditional cinema, and after a while we realise that it is actually part of the action: for

example, on Beethoven’s way to the coast of the Rhine (chapter 9), we hear the Leonore

Overture, and, as soon as he boards the ship (chapter 10), we realise that it comes from

musicians who are hiding in the ship. It is only natural to assume, initially, that the

music is non-diegetic, as we have been hearing it in different places, from the garden of

Page 68: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

68

the Beethovenhaus to the coast of the Rhine, and, therefore, it comes as a surprise to

find out that it was diegetic after all. Sometimes the music is diegetic and non-diegetic

at the same time: for example, when Beethoven strolls through the streets of Bonn

(chapter 2), we hear the Scherzo from the Ninth Symphony, which, again, we assume is

non-diegetic, until a busker plays along with the recording on his zither. In this case,

although the zither-playing is a diegetic sound, we cannot conclude that what we have

been hearing all this time was also diegetic; in this case, we have both diegetic and non-

diegetic sound sources, playing the same work at the same time. The same happens in

the sequence “Piano Soirée Linda Klaudius-Mann” (chapter 19), where, while in the

beginning the music is diegetic (we can see the pianist playing), suddenly a wind

ensemble, which is nowhere to be seen, joins her and plays along.

But apart from the use of diegetic and non-diegetic music and playing with the

undecidability between them, Kagel also makes use of meta-diegetic music. This,

according to Claudia Gorbman, is an extension of the concept of meta-diegetic

narration, which refers to narration by a secondary narrator. Therefore meta-diegetic

film music is music that we hear through one of the film characters, when “we are

privileged to read his musical thoughts” (Gorbman, 1987: 22-3). Indeed, in several

scenes of the first part of Ludwig van we are encouraged to believe that the music we

hear is neither part of the film action (diegetic), nor a mere accompaniment that sets the

mood for each scene (non-diegetic): we hear the music as if we are inside Beethoven’s

brain. For example, in those sequences where the action implies some kind of non-

musical sound (such as the Fremdenführer’s voice when he seems to talk) and we only

hear music, it is natural to assume we are hearing what Beethoven is hearing, inside his

head. The same happens in the “Music room” sequence (chapter 6), where all we can

hear is the notes that we can see through Beethoven’s eyes, therefore we are obviously

hearing through his inner ear. Again, as in the case of diegetic and non-diegetic sound,

Kagel never lets us be sure that the sound is meta-diegetic. All three functions of sound

coexist in Ludwig van, and it is not always important to know what the sound source is.

Page 69: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

69

3. Issues raised by the film

In the following section, I will examine some of the various issues regarding

Beethoven’s reception that Kagel brings up in Ludwig van. I will divide these into five

categories. The first one will be about what Klüppelholz refers to as musealisation of

Beethoven (Klüppelholz, 1981: 12), namely the fact that Beethoven – Beethoven

himself, or maybe his image, but not his music – is rendered an icon, respected and

admired like a god, but at the same time commercialised and (mis-)used for the sake of

profit. The second category will examine the references to Beethoven’s national

identity, the allusions to Nazism and the (mis-)use of Beethoven and his music for

political purposes. The third one will be related to the performance of Beethoven’s

music, regarding both its (mis-)use by performers, and the pressure they face when they

play this music. The fourth category will discuss the film’s references to the vast

scholarship on Beethoven. Finally, I will try and trace Kagel’s references to the “real”

Beethoven, whoever that may be: the part of the film that could be regarded as a tribute

to Beethoven as a human being, beyond the image that has been created around him in

the years between his death and the realisation of the film.

Page 70: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

70

A. Musealisation – Commercialisation

The word “Musealisierung” is used by Kagel, as well as Klüppelholz, to describe the

way Beethoven’s memory, his house and everyday objects are “preserved”. The reason

why I am not using the term “preservation” in order to translate “Musealisierung” is that

I find it necessary to convey the negative meaning of the latter term. According to

Adorno:

The German word museal [museumlike] has unpleasant overtones. It describes objects to which the observer no longer has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying. They owe their preservation more to historical respect than to the needs of the present. Museum and mausoleum are connected by more than phonetic association. Museums are the family sepulchres of works of art (Adorno, 1967: 175).

Obviously, “Musealisierung”, as a derivative of the adjective “museal”, refers to more

than just preserving Beethoven’s memory. It comments on the fact that we see

Beethoven and his music as something dead, which we respect only because we see its

historical value, and not because it is still relevant to us. Kagel was strongly against the

musealisation of Beethoven, and he went so far as to propose that, for the composer’s

bicentenary, “his music should not be performed for some time, so that the acoustic

nerves, which react to his music, could recover” (Kagel, 1975: 80). Explaining this to

Stephen Loy, he said:

Well look. Do you know the Song of Joy? This is prostitution. And I thought it [the Beethoven bicentenary year] would be a lot of things like that. It would be a lot of Beethoven music, all round the world… and avoid this, this kind of prostitution… I said… wait one year and then we will hear Beethoven again with a lot of pleasures, with fresh ears. It was simply that. It was a constructive irony. It was not trying to say ‘he’s not good enough’. Exactly the opposite. Let’s make a pause, and then we will see again that Beethoven is a very extraordinary composer… Look, in my telephone is the Song of Joy. I can’t influence this because it is the telephone company, but… when I call my wife in the next room, she hears the Song of Joy. It's incredible. This is prostitution. [Kagel, interview with Stephen Loy, (Loy, 2006: 143)]

Kagel goes that far as to call the Beethoven cult “prostitution”: the fact that his music is

played so much and in so different contexts (even in ringtones at the time of this

interview, although this was impossible back in 1970), makes it sound banal, and it

Page 71: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

71

prevents us from paying it the attention it deserves and appreciating it. For this reason,

he seems to believe that if Beethoven’s music was not played constantly around us and

if we spent some time without hearing it, we would become more receptive to it and

more capable of realising how relevant it still is.

From the first sequences of Ludwig van (chapter 2), Beethoven is depicted

arriving in Bonn of the late 1960s to find out that he has become a myth: passers-by

look at him bewildered, as if they find it too hard to believe that he is actually a human

being, children are scared of him when he approaches them, his music is performed

even by beggars in the streets, on instruments for which he never composed, and the

city seems to be full of statues of him. The phenomenon is by no means a recent one: as

Scott Burnham writes, the poet Franz Grillparzer, in the funeral oration he wrote for

Beethoven’s death, “describes the famous composer’s music as something akin to a

force of nature. Grillparzer goes on to claim that Beethoven will perforce have no

successors: anyone who comes after him will have to begin all over again, ‘for

[Beethoven] only stopped where Art itself stops’” (quoted in Burnham, 2000: 273).

According to Burnham, Grillparzer was the one who set the tone for a reception of

Beethoven as a hero, back in 1827. This iconic image of Beethoven as a romantic hero,

as a super-human whose level nobody will ever be able to reach, has never disappeared.

Everything that has ever been said about Beethoven and his music takes this image for

granted. And it is this image, as well as all the other images that people have invented

for Beethoven, that constitute the film’s main subject.

As Beethoven enters the house of his childhood he discovers that it has been

transformed into a museum. Austere busts and drawings of his face glare at him; all the

everyday objects he used, including his hearing aids, have been exposed to millions of

visitors over the years; even his alcoholic father’s wine cellar is now on full view; and

in the living room of the house, which is all covered in aluminium in order to be

“preserved”, the Fremdenführer is reading Theodor von Frimmel’s book on

Beethoven’s external appearance (chapters 2-5). According to Klüppelholz, Kagel

initially intended to include two pieces of literature that highlight this phenomenon in

his film: one of them is from Frimmel’s book and provides a thorough description of

Beethoven’s complexion and hair and the other one narrates anecdotes about his

nutrition and his nasty behaviour towards his servants: “Most of the times, he checked

Page 72: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

72

the eggs himself because in gastronomic matters he met with even less opposition than

normally, and if one of the eggs happened to smell badly, the back of the respective

housekeeper was being pelted [with it]” (quoted in Klüppelholz, 1981: 14). Every

seemingly unimportant aspect of everyday life seems to be studied very carefully, only

because it has to do with the great composer, as if the shape of his hearing aids could

help us understand his music better, or, more likely, as if we are more concerned about

the myth that we have created than about the real Beethoven and his music, although his

music is his only property that has reached us unspoilt. As Burnham puts it, “we

collectively fill in the picture of Beethoven’s personal and compositional paraphernalia,

the contents of his pockets, the types of paper he wrote on […] etc. Thus we are busy

reconstructing something like a Beethoven for the digital age, a Beethoven of ever finer

resolution […]. No longer can any one person control a vision of the whole” (Burnham,

2000: 289). In other words, the contemporary world’s need to examine all the details, to

exhaust all sources of knowledge concerning Beethoven, has its downside: we know so

many trivial things about him, that we cannot conceive him in his entirety any more.

Beethoven’s deafness is also present in the film: apart from the ear trumpets

exposed in the museum (chapter 2), there are several sequences where either no sound is

heard, or the only sound is Beethoven’s music, as only he could hear it inside his head,

as well as a sequence that shows a diagram depicting the anatomy of the ear (chapter

15). This is another of the elements that constitute the Beethoven myth. According to

Kristin M. Knittel, Wagner has played a very important part in this: “He proposed for

the first time that Beethoven’s late works were in fact his greatest and that his loss of

hearing was beneficial, even vital, to the creative process” (Knittel, 1998: 51). As Scott

Burnham notes: “Not unlike the blindness of the seer Teiresias, Beethoven’s deafness

becomes a martyrdom that guarantees his immortality” (Burnham, 2000: 279). The

Beethoven myth believes his deafness to be a guarantee of his genius, rather than an

obstruction to his creativity, as he seems to have considered it.

In another sequence of the film (chapter 4), Beethoven finds about a hundred

busts of himself floating in a bathtub. This scene has several possible allusions: first of

all, it could refer to the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who made over forty-five

attempts for a bust of Beethoven between 1887 and 1927, but was never content with

the result. “Never convinced that he had captured the face definitively, Bourdelle

Page 73: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

73

returned to it again and again, each time discovering a new Beethoven, ever more

distorted by his sufferings – or by the sculptor’s recognition that no single perspective

could signal the totality of the man” (Dennis, 2000: 299). On the other hand, the fact

that the busts that the Fremdenführer takes out of the water are more and more

disfigured, could be seen as an allegory for Beethoven’s image or memory. The further

the chronological distance to Beethoven, the more unrecognisable he is; the more

people try to reconstruct his image, the less this image resembles the real Beethoven.

We are tempted to believe Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, who, in his monograph Zur

Geschichte der Beethoven-Rezeption, argues that “there is no ‘real’ Beethoven waiting

beneath the accretions of history; rather, Beethoven is fully a construction of that

history” (quoted in Burnham, 2000: 288). Beethoven’s image has been so distorted

through the years since his death, by all the things people have written, said, or believed

about him, that our perception of Beethoven – or Beethoven’s perception in the late

1960s, when Ludwig van was made – has probably very little to do with Beethoven as a

human being.

On the other hand, the busts of Beethoven made of lard and marzipan allude to

the industry made out of important artists and scientists of the past – “Leibniz crackers,

Schiller pasties, Mozart balls”, as Heinz-Klaus Metzger says in the “Internationaler

Frühschoppen” sequence of the film – which is a direct consequence of “musealisation”.

Beethoven’s image is so popular that extraordinary sums of money are being earned

through it. The scenes in the record shop and the record factory (chapter 2) have a clear

reference to the commercialisation of the great composer: we witness a mass production

of identical records of a music composed two centuries ago, when it could be heard only

where it was performed. Beethoven is now a product of pop culture, copied and sold

millions of times throughout the world. In order to demonstrate this, Klüppelholz

compares Beethoven to Beckenbauer, a German football player and popular celebrity,

who was nicknamed “the Emperor”: “Beethoven and the latter’s [Beckenbauer’s] status

as representative of German culture is said to sometimes get confused – not only abroad

[i.e. outside Germany]” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 16). According to Burnham, the Beethoven

myth “remains alive as ever in mainstream commercial culture” (Burnham, 2001: 112).

Many examples can be brought to show this: Romain Rolland wrote his novel

Jean Christophe on “a Beethoven in the modern world”; the hero of Anthony Burgess’

Page 74: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

74

A Clockwork Orange (Burgess, 1962) is made to undergo the “Ludovico” treatment,

which, in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation (Kubrick, 1971), makes use of the Ninth

Symphony;9 there are plenty of Hollywood films on Beethoven, as well as one that is

actually called Beethoven, in which the title role belongs to a dog; an alternative rock

band is called Camper van Beethoven; the European anthem is no other than an

instrumental version of the Ode to Joy; it is claimed that even the size of the Compact

Disc was decided in such a way that it would fit the longest recorded version of the

Ninth Symphony (www.marantzphilips.nl). Beethoven is for sure the most popular

musician of all times and one of the most famous people in the world. And, as happens

usually with idols, it is not his music that makes him so well-known, but his image, as

well as what he stands for in our conscience: the person who, in spite of being of

humble origin and not a child prodigy – like Mozart for instance – managed to become

the most important musician ever; the artist who struggled against his physical disability

and composed masterpieces while being deaf; the first musician who managed to be

autonomous and compose at his own will; the great humanitarian; the revolutionist; the

artist who unifies the world, even centuries after his death, through the universal

language of music. We cannot be sure whether all of these aspects are discernible in

Beethoven’s music, or, as a matter of fact, whether he considered himself to be any of

these. The way the 20th or 21st-century world likes to see Beethoven is the way it depicts

him in its mainstream culture. And if there is something dangerous about this, it is that

we cannot be objective about him any more: the constructed image of Beethoven is too

huge to ignore and surpass.

9 It is interesting that the central character of A Clockwork Orange calls Beethoven “Ludwig van”, omitting the surname. However, Kagel claims that there is no connection between the title of his work and Burgess’ novel (Brix, 2004: 35).

Page 75: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

75

B. National identity – Politics

As I argued in section II.1, the Beethoven bicentenary was very influenced by the

political climate and the anti-authoritarian movement in West Germany in the late

1960s. Beethoven was regarded by many as a symbol of authority and bourgeois

society, and there was a lot of reflection regarding whether there was any point in still

celebrating him, two centuries after his death. This attitude must also have been

influenced from Beethoven’s misuse by the Nazi state, a fact that contributed in the

association of his image with totalitarian authority. In various sequences of his film,

which will be presented in this section, Kagel comments on the political misuse of

Beethoven throughout the time following his death.

In the “Internationaler Frühschoppen” sequence (chapter 11) of the film, one of

the subjects that are highlighted is Beethoven’s national identity, or else the question of

how German Beethoven was. Of course, as Austrian musical commentator Otto Tomek

says in this sequence, when asked whether Beethoven was German, Austrian or

something else, there is never going to be a clear answer to that, and the question is

rather pointless. Still, Beethoven’s nationality has proved to be an important matter in

the history of the past centuries, and that is exactly what Kagel wants to comment on by

including such a discussion in the film. He even makes a joke about the infamous van in

Beethoven’s name: when, again in the film, Werner Höfer talks about Herbert von

Karajan, he is not sure whether to call him von or van Karajan. This is most probably a

reference to the fact that, until 1818, Beethoven signed some of his letters as Ludwig

von Beethoven, preferring the German and aristocratic von to the Flemish and common

van (Buch, 2003: 89). It becomes obvious that Beethoven himself was also very

concerned about his identity and even tried falsely to claim a noble origin, in order to

achieve social status. And it seems that his status as a German composer is still very

important for his international popularity: when, in the same film sequence, Kagel is

asked whether Beethoven is more famous in Buenos Aires than Kagel himself is, his

answer is positive, and he adds ironically that it is because Beethoven has a sign

fastened to his left vest pocket saying “Made in Germany”. At the same time as he says

this, the German native speakers at the “Internationaler Früschoppen” show

continuously correct his language mistakes, as if trying to remind him that he is, and

always going to be, a non-German.

Page 76: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

76

Of course, the whole issue about Beethoven’s national identity has always

played a very important role in German politics. According to Burnham, it was Wagner,

once again, who played an important part in rendering Beethoven a political composer:

in his monograph for the centenary of the composer’s birth, in 1870, which coincided

with the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War, he “explicitly equated the

sublimity of Beethoven’s art with that of the German spirit”. In Wagner’s words,

“Today it behooves us to show that, through this musician Beethoven, who speaks in

the purest language of all peoples, the German spirit redeemed the spirit of man from

profound disgrace” (quoted in English translation in Burnham, 2000: 278). Since then,

and although Beethoven’s attitudes about government and society are said to have been

amateurish and even disoriented (Dennis, 1996: 23), or maybe because of that,

Beethoven’s music has been associated with all major events and regimes in German

history. Even during the years of the Third Reich, Beethoven’s music was highly

appreciated and accompanied all major events, making him part of the Nazi propaganda.

David B. Dennis reports that, because his appearance did not match the characteristics

of the Aryan race, extensive research was devoted to reconciling his racial

characteristics with his musical legacy. By 1934, the journal Volk und Rasse had

concluded that his eyes were entirely blue (Dennis, 1996: 148). Therefore, the question

that Höfer, the host of “Internationaler Früschoppen”, poses about Beethoven’s

nationality could also be considered an allusion to the Nazi claim that the great

composer belonged to the “chosen” race.

This is not the only reference to Nazism in Ludwig van: firstly, Hitler himself

plays an important role in the first part of the film, as the “Fremdenführer” of the

Beethovenhaus (chapters 2-8). According to Esteban Buch, it is “a Hitler who has

arrived at a tranquil old age to guard a classical treasure that has become as decomposed

as the bodies in any concentration camp” (Buch, 2003: 229). The question about

whether Beethoven is misused in the world comes up once again: the classical treasure

is “guarded” by those who actually use it for their own ends; Beethoven comes to the

20th-century world only to be guided through his own house by the Nazi Führer.

Another reference to Nazism comes much later in the film, in the “Piano Soirée Linda

Klaudius-Mann” sequence (chapter 19). Although Linda Klaudius-Mann is a female

name for Klaus Lindemann who plays the piano dressed up as an overaged transvestite,

Page 77: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

77

the sequence refers to Elly Ney (1882-1968), a German pianist who, according to

Michael H. Kater, did particularly well in the Third Reich and was regarded as “the

prototypical National Socialist musician”. Kater goes on to say that the anti-semitist

pianist had a preference for Beethoven, “after whom she styled herself physically,

displaying that same heroic facial expression and that well-known untamed mane”

(Kater, 1997: 31). Both these characteristics are discernible in the film: the mane is so

“untamed” that it gradually grows into the piano while she is playing, until it covers part

of the strings, and Lindemann’s facial expression seems to be the one of someone who

believes she has captured the essence of Beethoven’s music and personality, although

her performance is very far from being loyal to the score. Finally it could be argued that

the reference to Karajan in the “Internationaler Frühschoppen” sequence (chapter 11)

also has a slight allusion to Nazism, since it has been proved that he joined the Nazi

party twice, although he repeatedly denied it (Kater, 1997: 57).

The music of the film also seems to relate to the political side of Beethoven’s

reception: there is very frequent use of works like the Leonora Overtures, Fidelio and,

most importantly, the Ninth Symphony, which, as all of his “heroic” works, are

“highlighted in political culture” (Dennis, 1996: 20). Particularly in the last sequence

(chapter 20), both Fidelio and the Ode to Joy accompany the images of animals shown.

It is not surprising that this scene is what outraged critics most of all: how is it possible

to combine the most sublime work of music ever written with images of animals’

biological functions? “The moral distortion to which the music has been subjected is

thus topped off by voiding the work of the ‘great humanist’ of all trace of humanity”

(Buch, 2003: 230), Buch says, implying that this is only a grotesque reflection of what

Beethoven’s music has already been through. On the other hand, Klüppelholz finds the

criticism towards Kagel’s film mere hypocrisy: “Whoever has missed out the occident’s

downfall 40 years ago and seen it approach at the end of Ludwig van where at the

Freudenthema apes are delousing each other, surely also turned a deaf ear to Kagel’s

question if not at least all animals could become brothers” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 17).

Klüppelholz seems to be arguing that nobody has the right to criticise the film’s last

sequence for juxtaposing the Ninth Symphony with images of animals. Since humans

have proved, thirty years before the film was made, in the Second World War, that they

are never going to stop killing each other, we can still hope that at least the animals

might manage to do what humans cannot, to become brothers. On the other hand, we

Page 78: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

78

could suppose that Kagel took a little too literally the Ode to Joy’s references to

animals:

All creatures will drink joy At Nature’s bossom [...] Even the worm is given pleasure, And the cherub stands before God (quoted in Buch, 2003: 46).

Thus, he created an absolutely nonsensical sequence, just to illustrate the fact that the

Ode to Joy, however appreciated and treasured throughout the world, has not managed

to change humanity and to make all humans become brothers, as the famous sentence

from its text says.

Page 79: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

79

C. Beethoven and performers

Another crucial subject concerning Beethoven’s reception that Kagel comments on

through Ludwig van is the performance of his music. It can be argued that the music

Kagel used for the film, as well as the way this music was performed, recorded and

juxtaposed to the images of the film, is already a statement of his ideas on how

Beethoven should be performed. First of all, as it has already been suggested in section

III.2.A, the idea of performing Beethoven’s music as he could hear it in 1826 – pretty

badly – shows Kagel’s scepticism towards the concept of “authentic” and “historically

informed” performance. He claims that Beethoven’s music is performed in a much more

“authentic” way in the film, than by any supporter of the so-called historical

performance movement. Secondly, by using contemporary studio techniques as well as

by making a collage out of Beethoven’s music, he illustrates his point that “the music of

the past should also be performed as music of the present” (Kagel, 1970: IX). Or, as

Friedrich Nietzsche put it:

Should we put our soul […] into the older works according to their own soul? Not at all! Only in approaching them with our soul are old works capable of surviving. It is only our blood that makes them speak to us. The really historical performance would talk to ghosts” (quoted in Dorian, 1942: 313).

By using Beethoven’s music in an unorthodox manner, and by combining it with

moving images, Kagel makes the viewer hear it in a different way; as Klüppelholz says,

“Beethoven’s music, abstracted from the context of the concert ritual, is granted an

effect, which within the context of the concert ritual was almost lost” (Klüppelholz,

1981: 15). It is true that, for example, the Adagio from the Piano Sonata, op.109, sounds

warmer and more emotionally charged in the “Bathroom” sequence (chapter 4), as it is

played by string instruments while disfigured Beethoven busts are shown. Similarly, the

Marcia Funebre from the Piano Sonata, op.26, in the “Rhine journey” sequence

(chapter 10), gains a different quality than when it is performed in a piano recital: firstly

because it is actually played by a marching band as a proper funeral march; and

secondly because of the focus on different lines of the musical texture, as I described in

section III.1.

Page 80: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

80

Another performance-related issue is the misuse of Beethoven’s music by well-

known performers: Heinz Klaus Metzger’s attack on Herbert von Karajan, at the

“Internationaler Frühschoppen” sequence (chapter 11), has to do with the way the latter

performs this music. Metzger claims that Karajan performs Beethoven’s symphonies

with a “beautiful” orchestral sound, although there is nothing in Beethoven’s scores

stating that they have to sound “beautiful”, and that he conducts the orchestra, not the

works themselves. He argues that Karajan’s performances, in line with the approved

culture industry, rob Beethoven’s works of their “negative” and revolutionary essence

and distort them into something positive so as to make them enjoyable. The other well-

known performer attacked is Elly Ney, whose “Piano soirée” (chapter 19) is parodying

the performance of someone who claims to be, or is widely regarded as, a Beethoven-

expert: the pianist is not faithful to the text, adding artificial accents and altering the

rhythm unreasonably. In the end, it is only her expression and her hair that make her

look like a Beethoven-expert. It seems that, in both cases, Beethoven is only a medium

through which performers satisfy their narcissism, performing “beautiful” music,

according to their own criteria, but not the actual score.

There is one more performance-related issue highlighted in Ludwig van: the

pressure put on performers of Beethoven’s music and their subsequent anxiety about it.

Beethoven is widely considered as one of the most “difficult” composers to perform,

and it seems that everyone has very strong views on how his music should be played.

Talking about the piano sonatas only, one could name a vast amount of performers who

have dedicated books and articles on what they consider the right way to perform them:

Artur Schnabel, Joanna Goldstein, Alfred Brendel, William Newman are only few of

them. Kagel illustrates this anxiety in the “Rhine journey” sequence (chapter 10), where

Beethoven hears music played on the ship and tries to find the source of it, but the

musicians disappear when he goes towards them, as if they are frightened of him. It

looks as if the musicians’ awe of Beethoven is so great, that they do not want to play in

front of him for fear of his judgement.

The explanation for this fear comes later in the film, when Klaus Lindemann

plays the Piano Sonata, op.31 no.2, in a laboratory (chapter 17). More than a hundred

aspects of his performance are measured by different graphs according to the script,

although only about fifty can be seen in the actual film. Very few of them are technical

Page 81: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

81

terms concerning the performance, or rather errors of the performance, such as

“collapsed accentual points” or “unfortunate events”; most of them refer to scientific

examination of the body of the pianist, as in “pianist’s cramp”, “skeletal support”, or

“rheumatic pains”; quite a few refer to feelings the performer or the audience might

have, such as “contentment”, “spoilt enjoyment” or “demonic acoustic impression”;

finally, some of them, like “church music”, “conservatory” or “sedatives” seem to be

irrelevant to an examination of a performance, although they might affect it. Although

most of these aspects do not seem to make any sense, the whole idea brings to mind all

the aspects of a performance that can be judged, by the critics or the “experts”, or even

by the musicians themselves, while trying to achieve a better performance. Anyone who

endeavours to play Beethoven in public has to face such a detailed criticism that he/she

has to try very hard during both the preparation and the performance in order to be

satisfactory from every perspective, even more if we take into account that experts very

often disagree with each other. In the end, it is most probable that what will be missing

from the performance will be the performer’s enjoyment.

Finally, another issue that the film addresses is about the recordings of

Beethoven’s music, which are somehow related to performance, since they have made it

possible for music lovers to listen to the music without going to the concert hall, hiring

a performer, or playing the music themselves. It is needless to say that records have

affected musical performance very much: firstly, because fewer performers are needed

in the music industry, which makes it harder for performers to survive in it, and,

therefore, the level of performance has become much higher; secondly, because for the

first time in the history of music, a single performance of a composition is not unique

anymore, as we can capture it and listen to it over and over again. This last point is

highlighted in the sequence “Record Shop/Electrola” (chapter 2): in its first part, lots of

people are shown listening to Beethoven’s music as motionless and expressionless as

the machines they are listening through; in the second, we witness a mass production of

identical records that can deliver a specific performance of a specific work anywhere in

the world. Kagel comments on this subject also through the way in which he recorded

the music of the film: it could be argued that the bad performances heard during the

whole film are partly a way of expressing his opposition to the absolute but inhuman

perfection of most commercial recordings.

Page 82: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

82

D. Scholarship on Beethoven

“Beethoven’s conversation books as the focus of a study of the structural

interdependence of involuntary literature and reception”: this is the title of a scholarly

essay that a “typical” academic, wearing a tie and glasses, writes on a typewriter in the

sequence “Prof. Schuldt” (chapter 13). Here Kagel obviously satirises the endless

scholarship on Beethoven and his music that has been conducted over the years after the

composer’s death. The style of writing is pompous and nonsensical, and the subject is

so narrow that, firstly, it would not interest anyone but its writer, and secondly, it would

not help us get any closer to understanding the composer or his music. Another

reference of the film to academics’ misuse of Beethoven is Frimmel’s Beethovens

äußere Erscheinung (Beethoven’s outer appearance), the book which the Fremdenführer

is reading in the living room of the Beethovenhaus (chapter 5): the myth around

Beethoven’s personality is so fascinating that people devote themselves to systematic

research about the exact colour of his hair and eyes, the quality of his complexion, or

the width of his forehead.

It can be argued that apart from being the only composer who has become the

subject of so many books, articles and research projects, Beethoven was also the first

composer on whom it was considered necessary to conduct research. According to

Burnham, E.T.A. Hoffman and A.B. Marx were the first to point out that his music was

not to be judged at a first hearing, but had to be studied and analysed carefully. “A

hermeneutic imperative quickly gathered strength in the face of his music, one which

has not abated. His works have been heard to be telling us something, as a kind of

secular scripture in need of hermeneutic mediation” (Burnham, 2001: 112). Since then,

all kinds of different aspects of his life have been studied in depth: the hearing aids he

used, his physicians, even the suicidal attempt of his nephew, are only few of the

subjects studied. Talking about the endless scholarship on Beethoven, as portrayed in

the film, Klüppelholz writes: “Beethoven as an object of science that gives birth to

heaps of books; traces Beethoven by x-rays; renders him the subject of lectures that are

not less half-witted than the mindless drivel of the descendant” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 17).

In saying this, not only does he address the massive production of essays on Beethoven,

but he also compares the intelligence of the scholar who appears in the film to that of

Page 83: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

83

the insane person who claims that he is Beethoven’s only descendant in the sequence

“Beethoven’s descendant” (chapter 12).

Of course, it is not Kagel’s intention to denounce academia in its entirety; the

above references to scholarship on Beethoven address a very specific type of pedantic

research on trivial things. And on the other hand, it would not be in the film’s goals to

cover the whole range of writings on Beethoven; since one of the main aspects of the

film is its irony, it is only reasonable that it highlights the most mediocre or exaggerated

samples of this vast scholarship. That being said, we can detect one reference to this

subject that does not seem to be ironic, that is in fact only addressed and not commented

on. That is Metzger’s reference to the “negative essence” of Beethoven’s works in

“Internationaler Frühschoppen”. By the term “negative essence” Metzger, whom

“Adorno considered one of the most genuine interpreters of his own thought”

(Hoeckner, 2005: 48), refers to the concept of negation or antithesis in the classic

dialectic triad Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis. In the notes he kept for a book he never

managed to write on Beethoven (published under the title Beethoven: The Philosophy of

Music several years after his death), Theodor Adorno claims that “in relation to him

[Beethoven], the concept of negation as that which drives a process forward can be very

precisely grasped. It involves a breaking off of melodic lines before they have evolved

into something complete and rounded, in order to impel them into the next figure”

(Adorno, 1998: 18). Metzger discusses the socio-political connotations of this negation:

Beethoven’s music bears a negation towards bourgeois society, which the latter

conceals and avoids seeing by turning this music into something positive, in other

words to something simple and without depth. This concealment of the negative essence

of Beethoven’s music is illustrated in an earlier sequence of the film (chapter 8) where

his scores are left to dry among the laundry. Washing Beethoven’s scores in order to rid

them of anything “dirty” or “negative”, signifies a form of false purification, an attempt

to reconstruct a memory of Beethoven which will retain only the positive aspects of him

and his music.

In Metzger’s opinion, Beethoven’s works cannot simply be tamed and purified

according to bourgeois ideals: in spite of what bourgeois society wants to believe about

them, they are never going to be fully interpreted and understood; they are always going

to reveal new elements. And this is true art’s way of refusing to conform with the

Page 84: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

84

culture industry, as Michael Spitzer claims in his book on Adorno’s views on

Beethoven’s late style: “Art’s cognitive negativity (its resistance to interpretation)

enables it to resist being neutralised by the ‘culture industry’; unlike ‘mere’

entertainment, authentic art doesn’t sell out” (Spitzer, 2006: 270). What Metzger argues

is that, regardless of the fact that some modern performers interpret Beethoven’s music

as simple and entertaining, it will always prove to be multifaceted, to reveal more

unexplored sides.

Page 85: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

85

E. Beyond Beethoven’s myth – Distance

Although Kagel’s film mainly addresses issues regarding Beethoven’s reception, there

are still some details in it through which Kagel seems to pay tribute to the actual

Beethoven, the person behind the image. Probably that is why, in his characteristic

ironic way, he called Ludwig van a declaration of love to Beethoven (Kagel, 1975: 77).

The facts, first of all, that Beethoven is personified by the camera and that his deafness

is often illustrated through the lack of sound, forces the viewer to watch the film

through his own eyes, to wonder how he would react to the world’s attitude towards

him. Likewise, the non-square angles and the narrowness of the children’s room

(chapter 5) are supposed to “reflect the damaged environments of Beethoven, the moral

gloominess of the late eighteenth century” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 12). Here Kagel – and of

course Stefan Wewerka, who constructed the room – tries to get closer to the great

composer by reflecting on the way he grew up. Another reference to Beethoven’s

environment and upbringing is the laundry in the garden, where every sheet has a moral

epigram of his era sewn on it. These epigrams, along with the fact that all the sheets are

white – the colour of innocence – seem to reflect the conservative ethics in late 18th-

century Germany. Finally, the choice of the song In questa tomba oscura (WoO 133),

sung by a baritone in a “provincial lieder soirée” (chapter 16), is the only occasion

where Kagel gives Beethoven an opportunity to speak for himself: although sung by

someone else, the text of the song suggests that it is Beethoven who is asking to retire in

a dark tomb, not wanting to know more about how people of the 20th century regard

him.

It can be argued that there is another aspect of the film that, in a more subtle

way, refers to Beethoven the human being, rather than the great composer or the hero.

This is its preoccupation with the body and its functions, the matter of physicality. One

of the ways that it is manifested is in the various representations of body organs: a rib

cage, a skull, a diagram of the anatomy of the ear, x-rays of arms and heads and others.

Another way is through the emphasis on body parts of the people appearing in the film:

the film starts with a man shaving his beard; there are often close-ups on broadcasters’

hands; one of the broadcasters in chapter 11 is shown rubbing his face with his hands

for a considerable amount of time; Klaus Lindemann’s playing is examined in the

“Laboratory” (chapter 17) through machines connected to his limbs; Linda Klaudius-

Page 86: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

86

Mann’s hair grows into the piano while she plays the first two bars of the Waldstein

Sonata (chapter 19). It seems that Kagel highlights Beethoven’s physical side, as

opposed to the spiritual side: Beethoven must have been a real human with flesh and

bones, regardless of whether we want to consider him a god on earth. And in order to

illustrate this fact in an even more ironic way, Kagel ends his film on the great

composer by showing images of animals: he leaves the spirit out of the final sequence

and shows only bodies doing their common functions.

In trying to get to the real Beethoven, Kagel finds that it is too hard a task.

According to Klüppelholz, a number of aspects of the film illustrate the distance with

which we are confronted in our attempt to approach Beethoven (Klüppelholz, 1981: 15).

All of these aspects have to do with the concept of time: all of the several television

presenters that appear are old; there are several anachronisms, like a telephone in the

Beethoven house or music scores of the late 19th and 20th century in the lumber room of

the house; very often in the film there is a lack of synchronisation between image and

sound. Klüppelholz believes that the games Kagel plays with time illustrate our

chronological distance from Beethoven: we cannot claim to know anything about him

for sure, nothing is really clear, even “the most convincing factual evidence is being

questioned” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 15). The film does not claim to depict any undeniable

facts about the great composer; what it rather means to express, as a tribute towards

Beethoven, is, in Klüppelholz’s words, “Love from a distance” (Klüppelholz, 1981: 18).

Page 87: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

87

4. Reception of the film

It is hardly surprising that Kagel’s film was widely regarded as blasphemous. According

to Chrisitan Brix, during the first screening the comments uttered by the audience

ranged from “disgrace” to “brainless shit”. One man even threatened “I’m going to

report this to Herr von Karajan”. Brix goes on to say that it seemed as if these reactions

were actually staged by Kagel himself (Brix, 2004: 55). Indeed, in a way Kagel could

hardly have hoped for a better feedback from his audience: it was as if the audience

wanted to demonstrate the absurdities of the Beethoven myth that Kagel addresses

through his film. The fact that some people got so insulted by a film that exposed the

Beethoven cult – without even insulting Beethoven himself, or his music – shows the

level of fanaticism and intolerance among the supporters of the Beethoven myth, which

is reminiscent of fundamentalist religious cults.

The reviews the film received were not more welcoming, the most striking being

Hilde Spiel’s criticism of Kagel in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She sees Ludwig

van as an attack on two or three thousand years of Western civilisation, and believes

that this attack could have equally been aimed at Aristotle, Erasmus or Kant. She claims

that it is Kagel, more than anyone else, who should let Beethoven rest in questa tomba

oscura, obviously referring to chapter 16 of the film (quoted in Buch, 2003: 230). In an

interview with Klüppelholz, Kagel admitted that he did not expect a Jewish person to

express views that could easily come from a Nazi critic, and claimed that “insisting on

tradition was only an excuse in order to reject every innovation” (Kagel, 2001: 26).

Indeed, Spiel’s attack on Kagel does not seem to be inspired by her love and respect for

Beethoven, but by her disapproval of anything progressive or even merely different.

The only critic I have come across who did not condemn the film at the time of

its first appearance was Gerhard Brunner, who seems to have appreciated its anti-

authoritarian attitude: in his view, Ludwig van was a criticism of concert organisers and

audiences who, actively or passively, participated “in the gigantic convergence of

culture and commerce that we have to thank for the beautiful years of jubilations and

festivals”, which he considers “the most visible signs of our belief in authorities, an

adherence to the notion of the indestructibility of the classic tradition.” (Brunner, quoted

and translated in Kutschke, 2011: 577).

Page 88: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

88

It is worth mentioning that, although Kagel indirectly expressed his resentment

for the misuse of Beethoven by bourgeois society through Metzger’s talk in the

“Internationaler Frühschoppen” sequence, the film was heavily criticised by Eastern

German critics too, as an example of the decadence of late bourgeois society. Georg

Knepler dismisses Kagel’s statement that Beethoven’s music should not be performed

for some time so that our acoustic nerves would recover, by saying that we should not

hear Beethoven only with our ears, but also with our brain, and that the problem of

bourgeois society does not lie in its ears, but in its whole body and soul (Knepler, 1971:

34). Werner Rackwitz says that Kagel’s statement is typical of the imperialist hostility

against culture and argues that Ludwig van is not a love declaration to Beethoven, but to

nihilism and decadence (Rackwitz, 1971: 16). Finally, Ernst Hermann Meyer believes

that the film is a deliberate attempt to damage Beethoven’s reputation:

Some individuals are emptying buckets of trash on Beethoven. Doing so, Mr Mauricio Kagel tries to denigrate his [Beethoven’s] character and to spoil his legacy through a representation that verges on the pornographic (Meyer, 1971: 583).

Kagel’s Ludwig van was far from well-received by audiences and critics of its

time. I do not believe that this reflects the film’s quality as an artwork. In fact, I believe

that Kagel must have foreseen the criticism he would get for it. The film exposed the

myth around Beethoven, but for the supporters of this myth, who could not see beyond

it, it felt as if it was attacking Beethoven himself. In addition, the film was made after a

commission from German television, which means at public expense, and it attacked

mainstream culture, including television programmes. Finally, Kagel’s sense of humour

was probably too cynical for German audiences of the time: they were obviously not

prepared to accept ironic allusions to the Nazis less than thirty years after the Second

World War, and they were shocked to hear the humanistic and divine Ode to Joy as

background music to images of animals performing their earthly functions. I am

convinced that Kagel knew how insulting they would find Ludwig van, and I find it

admirable that he did the film despite that. Being a foreign artist and shooting such a

provocative film on Beethoven in the country which boasts to be his birthplace must

require a lot of courage, and a strong confidence in one’s ideas. Both through the film

and through its reception, Kagel managed to get his point across.

Page 89: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

89

Chapter IV

Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven

The subject of this chapter is Kagel’s score Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven, its

realisations to date and the performing issues and challenges it poses. In the first section

I will give a brief description of the score, a list of the recognisable Beethoven

quotations in it, and an account of Kagel’s performing instructions for it. In the second

section, the work will be reviewed according to principles of postmodern art, and I will

investigate whether Ludwig van is a postmodern work of art, whereas the third section

will compare Ludwig van to art and music movements of its time. In the fourth section I

will analyse Kagel’s recording of Ludwig van on Deutsche Grammophon, and in the

fifth I will talk about other known realisations of the composition. Finally, in the last

section I will talk about Ludwig van from the point of view of a performer who sets out

to interpret this score: I will present the challenges that such a score poses, as well as

my view on how these challenges are to be tackled.

Page 90: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

90

1. The score

As mentioned before, Ludwig van is the only case in Kagel’s career where a musical

score is not the starting point for the making of a film, but the score itself is derived

from an already existing film. Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven seems to be a by-

product of Ludwig van: Ein Bericht. The whole score consists of photographs and close-

ups of the walls, furniture and props of the music room that Kagel constructed for the

purposes of the film. And the fact that the score exists could even be considered a mere

coincidence: had Jiří Kolář obtained permission to leave Czechoslovakia and construct

the music room, Kagel would not have made it himself, and therefore he would not have

been able to make a score out of it and present it as his own work. In addition, as

Holsträter argues (Holsträter, 2003: 87, referred to in section III.1), the result would

have been very different: the fragments of scores on the walls of the room would have

been much smaller, consisting of individual notes, and the essence of Beethoven’s

music would have got lost in the procedure.

The score consists of 45 photographs, taken mainly from parts of the music

stands, the window, the door and a chair in the room. Different degrees of clarity can be

found even in the same picture, depending on the distance from the camera and the

angle from which the picture has been taken. In some of the photographs long fragments

of Beethoven’s music can be found intact, whereas in others the fragments are much

shorter – there are even some one-note fragments. Therefore, not all the fragments can

be identified, but the ones that are clear suggest that most of the pages used for the

construction of the music room were from the violin sonatas, the piano sonatas and

some piano reductions of Fidelio and the symphonies. Although there is no evidence

that Kagel deliberately restricted the scores used, it seems that he preferred to use

chamber music and reductions rather than orchestral parts and full symphonic scores. It

is also interesting that there is not a single singing part in the photographs. As one

would expect, there are very few tempo indications in the score, the key and time

signatures are most of the times absent, and there are also many fragments with no

indicated dynamics. What is more, some of the fragments are upside down, making the

viewer who holds the book in the usual way see the inversion rather than the original

version of the material shown.

Page 91: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

91

Below you will find a list of all 45 photographs of the score, the part of the room

where they were taken, and the Beethoven works to which the fragments in the

photographs belong. As pointed out earlier, there are fragments in the photographs that

could not be identified; but they constitute a small minority, and, therefore, the list can

help us get a good idea of the music Kagel used for Ludwig van. Latin numbers are used

to signify which movement of each work is being used. Bar numbers of the fragments

are not shown in the list, as there are usually many short fragments of a work rather than

one longer one, and it would be too complicated and, in my opinion, unnecessary to

indicate exactly which bars are being used. For example, in the third page of the score,

shown in Example 1, some fragments of the Violin Sonata, op.12 no.1, are to be found:

in the first column, bars 127-128 and 133-134 from the first movement and bars 14-16,

131-133,137-139, 146 and 154 from the third movement; in the second column, bars

131-132 from the first movement and bars 11-13, 129-131 and 135-137 from the third

movement; in the third column, bars 126-127 and 132-133 from the first movement and

bars 12-15, 130-132, 136-138, 145-146 and 153-154 from the third movement. I believe

it is obvious that there would be no point in giving such a detailed account of all the

fragments used in all 45 pages of the score.

Page 92: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

92

Example 1, Ludwig van score, p.3

Page 93: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

93

A. List of fragments of Beethoven’s music used in the score of Ludwig van

Page Part of room Beethoven works 1 music stand – overview too far away to trace any fragments 2 music stands – columns Violin Sonata No.1, op.12 no.1, I (violin part) 3 music stands – columns Violin Sonata No.1, op.12 no.1, I (violin part) Violin Sonata No.2, op.12 no.2, III (violin part)

Violin Sonata No.5, op.24, II (violin part) 4 music stands – columns Violin Sonata No.1, op.12 no.1, III, Var. 2, 3, 4 (violin part) 5 music stand – base Violin Sonata No.2, op.12 no.2, I (violin part)

Violin Sonata No.3, op.12 no.3, I (violin part) Violin Sonata No.5, op.24, II (violin part)

6 music stand – base Violin Sonata No.2, op.12 no.2, III (violin part)

Violin Sonata No.5, op.24, II (violin part) 7 music stand – base Violin Sonata No.2, op.12 no.2, I (violin part)

Violin Sonata No.5, op.24, II (violin part) 8 music stand – screw Violin Sonata No.1, op.12 no.1, III, Var. 4 (violin part) 9 music stand – from above no notes can be traced, only stems are visible 10 music stand – detail Violin Sonata No.1, op.12 no.1, III, Var. 2, 4 (violin part) 11 music stand – detail Piano Sonata No.11, op.22, I, II 12 music stand – detail Violin Sonata No.1, op.12 no.1, III, Var. 2, 4 (violin part) 13 window – overview too far away to trace any fragments 14 window detail Symphony No.2, op.36, I (piano transcription) 15 window detail too short fragments to identify 16 window detail Symphony No.2, op.36, II (piano transcription) 17 window detail Symphony No.1, op.21, I (piano transcription)

Symphony No.8, op.93, IV (piano transcription)

Page 94: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

94

18 window detail Symphony No.1, op.21, I (piano transcription)

Symphony No.8, op.93, IV (piano transcription) 19 window detail too short fragments to identify 20 window detail Symphony No.2, op.36, II (piano transcription) 21 window detail Piano Sonata No.12, op.26, I (var. 2), III 22 chair Piano Sonata No.10, op.14 no.2, II 23 chair Piano Sonata No.15, op.28, II, IV 24 chair Piano Sonata No.11, op.22, IV 25 chair Piano Sonata No.11, op.22, I 26 chair Piano Sonata No.1, op.27 no.1, IV 27 chair Piano Sonata No.10, op.14 no.2, I 28 not clear Fidelio Overture (piano reduction) 29 oval picture Violin Sonata No.4, op.23, III (violin part)

Violin Sonata No.8, op.30 no.3, I (violin part) 30 oval picture Violin Sonata No.8, op.30 no.3, I (violin part) Violin Sonata No.9, op.47, I, III (violin part) 31 oval picture too short fragments to identify 32 not clear too short fragments to identify 33 not clear too short fragments to identify 34 oval picture Violin Sonata No.8, op.30 no.3, II (violin part) Violin Sonata No.9, op.96, IV (violin part)

Fidelio, “Nur hurtig fort, nur frisch gegraben” and “Euch werde Lohn in bessern”

35 oval picture Fidelio, “Nur hurtig fort, nur frisch gegraben”

and “Euch werde Lohn in bessern” 36 door – overview too far away to trace any fragments door handle too short fragments to identify 37 door detail Piano Sonata No.21, op.53, III 38 door detail Piano Sonata No.16, op.31 no.1, II

Page 95: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

95

Symphony No.3, op.55, IV (piano transcription) 39 door detail Piano Sonata No.16, op.31 no.1, I Piano Sonata No.30, op.109, III (Var. 4)

Symphony No.4, op.60, I (transcription for piano four hands)

40 door detail Piano Sonata No.16, op.31 no.1, II Piano Sonata No.21, op.53, II

Symphony No.1 op.21, I (transcription for piano four hands)

41 door detail Symphony No.3, op.55, IV (transcription for piano

four hands) Symphony No.4, op.60, I (transcription for piano four hands)

42 door detail Piano Sonata No.19, op.49 no.1, II

Piano Sonata No.20, op.49 no.2, I Piano Sonata No.21, op.53, I Symphony No.4, op.60, III (transcription for piano four hands) Symphony No.9, op.125, IV (transcription for piano four hands)

43 door detail Piano Sonata No.17, op.31 no.2, III Symphony No.4, op.60, II, III (transcription for piano four hands)

44 not clear Violin Sonata No.8, op.30 no.3, I (violin part) String Quartet No.1, op.18 no.1, I (2nd violin) String Quartet No.6, op.18 no.6, II (1st violin) 45 not clear Piano Sonata No.11, op.22, IV

Piano Sonata No.12, op.26, I (Var. 2), III

There are a number of things this chart might suggest, but none of them can be

proved, since there is no surviving evidence casting light on how Kagel created the

music room, or on how he decided which objects to shoot in order to make the score.

First of all we can see that there are lots of piano and violin sonatas, several piano

transcriptions of symphonies, some fragments of piano arrangements of Fidelio, and a

couple of violin parts from string quartets. It seems that he chiefly used extracts that

contain the main layers of the music’s texture, rather than musical background. For

instance, he did not use accompanying patterns from parts or full scores of the

symphonies, or the viola parts from the quartets, which are usually less significant. The

Page 96: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

96

fact that he used piano transcriptions of orchestral works instead of original scores also

highlights the fact that he probably wanted the melodic lines of the music to be in

Ludwig van, rather than insignificant fragments of Alberti bass or long notes, as would

have been the case had he employed orchestral scores or parts.

Secondly, it seems that Kagel did not have a specific programme or pattern in

mind when he was creating the music room. There are several cases where two or three

subsequent works – the first and second violin sonatas, the nineteenth, twentieth and

twenty-first piano sonatas – are found next to each other in the same picture. This

probably suggests that he covered the room in scores in a random way, not trying to mix

different scores together or to juxtapose different genres. That said, it might not be

completely random that on the chair, which is in front of the piano, there are mainly

piano sonatas, whereas on the music stand there are only violin parts from violin

sonatas. Obviously, in these two cases, there might be an allusion to the fact that a

pianist would sit on the chair whereas a violinist would stand in front of the music

stand, so maybe these particular scores are there on purpose. Still, we cannot find a

connection between the window of the room and the symphonies that cover most of its

surface, and there seems to be no apparent reason why the door contains both piano

sonatas and symphonies.

Page 97: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

97

B. Kagel’s instructions

Kagel provides the performer with a long list of instructions on how to interpret the

score; but although they are very detailed and precise, they seem to be able to be

replaced by one sentence: the performers can play anything they want, as long as it is by

Beethoven. What actually happens is that Kagel explains very clearly how the score of

Ludwig van should be used, only to reveal, in the last instruction, that other Beethoven

works can be used as well, and that this can be done both in random and in organised

ways. Below is a summary of the instructions for using the score, and subsequently

Kagel’s suggestions for using additional material from Beethoven’s music.

Most of Kagel’s instructions on the use of the score are about what the

performers are allowed to do, rather than what they have to do or what they are

forbidden to do: the sequence of pages is ad libitum, each page can be seen both as a

musical piece in its own right and as part of a larger composition, players can play from

the same or from different pages at any time, not all notes on a page have to be played,

anything can be repeated and each of the four edges of the page can be the bottom edge.

Original tempi, even of identified fragments, are not obligatory, and dynamics are to be

followed, when they are there, which, more often than not, is not the case. The number

of performers and the instrumentation are absolutely free, and the use of old, exotic or

electric instruments, experimental sound sources, tape recording or electro-acoustic

alterations of instrumental sound is welcome. Finally, the duration of performance is

free.

Only two of the instructions given are of an imperative nature: one of them

demands that the reading of the score can be done in only one of two suggested ways

for any one performance: either 1) performers produce their normal sound (“ordinario-

tone”) when the picture is very clear, and the blurrier the image becomes, the more they

alter their sound; or 2) they play their ordinario-tone when the image is very blurry and

alter their sound as the image becomes clearer. The other instruction which does not

allow but dictates, says that even performances with larger ensembles should be

transparent, and that tutti passages should be few and short in any one performance,

presumably in order to prevent the chaotic sound of several instruments performing

random fragments of music, all at the same time. Even in the latter case, although this

Page 98: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

98

instruction is phrased as an obligation rather than as a choice, it is not clear to what

extent tutti passages should be avoided. They have to be “few” and “short”, but these

adjectives are anyway very subjective: for instance, one performer might consider a

one-minute tutti passage to be short enough, but another could find it too long. Even this

instruction leaves room for the subjectivity of the performer.

As to how to use the material – “short fragments”, Kagel says, once again

without specifying how short they should be – from Beethoven’s music that is not in the

score of Ludwig van, Kagel gives us no fewer than five different options, without

limiting the performer to using only one of them. The first three options are under the

subtitle “Chance instrumentation”, and describe possible instrumentations for when all

players perform the same extract at once: the first one suggests that each performer

plays parts which are originally for another instrument; the second, that all performers

play from piano arrangements of symphonic works; the third, that they all play parts

from piano sonatas. The other two are under the title “Montage”10 and they refer to

ways of combining more than one work by Beethoven: the first one suggests that each

performer plays a part originally designed for their instrument, whereas the second

proposes that the performers be divided in groups, each playing a different Beethoven

composition, in the original instrumentation.

From all the above, it is clear that Kagel did not want to set any limits on the

performers’ creativity. Beethoven’s music can be used in many different ways: it can be

played, combined and ordered in a totally random way, if the performers want to make

use of Kagel’s score only, or it can be reorganised according to the performers’ will,

applying different levels of control, from a vague decision on the overall structure, to a

written-out collage. Therefore, the result could sound like an aleatoric work, like a

Beethoven parody, or even like a fully composed atonal work, depending on the way

the performers want to structure it. What seems to be important from Kagel’s point of

view is that he did not make the decisions himself. Ludwig van: Hommage von

10 It is not clear whether Kagel uses the words “collage” and “montage” in the same sense. In The New Grove dictionary they are mentioned as synonyms (Burkholder, 2001: 110), whereas in Mayer’s Dictionary of art terms and techniques, “montage” is defined as a picture made up of various images (Mayer, 1969: 250), whereas “collage” can include “fabrics or any natural or manufactured material”. This distinction does not seem to be made, or to make sense, at least literally, in music.

Page 99: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

99

Beethoven is not simply a piece of chance music, where important decisions are left to

chance; it is a composition in which the decisions are to be made by the performer.

Page 100: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

100

2. Ludwig van as a postmodern composition

In this section, I will relate Ludwig van to some of the key concepts of postmodern

theory. It is not clear whether Kagel himself was interested in the postmodernism

debate: as Heile quotes, when requested to give a statement for a conference on

postmodernism, he claimed that none of the important composers is interested in it

(Kagel, 1991b: 41; quoted in Heile, 2002: 296). On the other hand, in an interview with

Klüppelholz, although he argues that the concepts of modernism and postmodernism are

inseparable (Kagel, 1991a: 99), he seems to identify postmodern elements in his works:

There have been postmodern elements already in my early works, because I was always fascinated by the opportunity that composers have: to illuminate inherited material in new ways and to pass it on (Kagel, 1991a: 101).

Later in the same interview, he reveals his fascination for the question of how canonic

composers would develop their musical language, had they been born 150 or 200 years

later, and suggests that “the answer would probably have to do with the essence of the

postmodern” (Kagel, 1991a: 104). It seems that Kagel identified musical

postmodernism, to a great extent, with the turn to tradition that happened in music of the

avant-garde of the late 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, Ludwig van would certainly have

been branded as a postmodern work by Kagel, as it is mainly concerned with

interpreting inherited music in new ways. However, in my opinion postmodernism in

music does not only have to do with incorporating aspects of the canon in new works. In

this section I will examine Ludwig van from the points of view of literary theorists and

musicologists who have engaged in the postmodern debate.

Page 101: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

101

A. Intertextuality

Ludwig van can be seen as exemplifying the term “intertextuality”, coined in 1967 –

only three years before the score’s publication – by the poststructuralist philosopher

Julia Kristeva. Intertextuality refers to the interdependence between all literary texts,

and the fact that no text exists on its own; all such texts bear relations, references to and

quotations from other texts. Of course it must be highlighted that Kristeva did not talk

only about deliberate quotations and allusions to other texts: she claimed that

intertextuality is present in every text, either purposefully or not. But since the coining

of the term there have been several works which use a vast number of quotations

deliberately.

The use of quotations and references in music, as in literature, is by no means a

new practice. The parody mass and the quodlibet are two of the oldest forms in Western

art music that were constructed using borrowed material. These precedents of collage

are different from the actual collage technique in that the quoted elements in them are

assembled in such a way that they fit smoothly in their new context, and they sound as

if they are part of it. On the contrary, in collage, in music as well as in the visual arts,

the separate elements retain their character and they are usually juxtaposed to other

material. The first composer who systematically applied this technique in his works was

Charles Ives, but it became popular with the European avant-garde composers in the

1950s and 1960s: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Goerge Rochberg,

Luciano Berio composed significant works using the collage technique. The influence

of Ives, but also the socio-political climate and its focus on and questioning of tradition

must have played a role in this development, as I argued in section II.1. The main

difference between these works and the referential works before them is that they use

quotations to a greater extent and in a more conscious way; it seems that the very

substance of this music lies in the diversity of the styles it incorporates.

Ludwig van, a product of the same period, is yet a different case. Instead of

consisting of different and contrasting styles like the polystylistic works, it is made up

only out of quotations from the music of one specific composer: it still focuses on

tradition, but one very specific part of the classical music tradition. This is why Kagel

responds to the labelling of his composition as “collage” by replying that a more

Page 102: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

102

appropriate way of describing it would be “metacollage” (Kagel, 1970: VIII), since the

fragments he used in its construction were all from Beethoven’s music, without mixing

them with music of any other style or composer. It is hard to tell whether Kagel’s

concept of metacollage bears any connection with Stockhausen’s: the latter gave a

lecture at Darmstadt called Metacollage and Integration in the summer of 1970, only

months after Kagel’s use of the term in his interview with Karl Faust. It is also hard to

find out who came up with the term first, and also whether the one was familiar with the

other’s use of the term. What is quite clear is that, although they both used the term to

mean “beyond traditional collage technique”, and although they both called for a more

coherent form of collage, they did not mean quite the same thing: according to

Stockhausen, metacollage would involve “the intermodulation of all the different forces

that are combined in one composition” (Cott, 1974: 174). Therefore, whereas in Kagel

the coherence is achieved through the use of material from the same source, according

to Stockhausen it is brought about by the interaction between heterogeneous elements.

In any case, the ideal of the metacollage lies in the coherence between its

elements, although these elements are fragments of different entities. Whereas in

Schnittke’s and Berio’s works the collage is made by incorporating music from the past

into a contemporary musical language, which makes the fragmentation and the clash

between the different elements very obvious, Kagel wants to avoid this:

Listening to a composition in which musical quotes occur sporadically is often rather like watching at the window: people walk past while you stay; if you happen to know somebody, there is an exchange of polite nods. I on the contrary wanted to assemble as coherent as possible a montage by means of meticulous inbreeding of more or less familiar pieces without the introduction of alien bodies. Rather than distract him with anecdotes to be recognised, I wanted the listener to be able to concentrate on the substance of the musical context (Kagel, 1970: VIII).

Kagel did not want the listeners to keep themselves busy with trying to identify the

quotations; he wanted them to listen to the essence of Beethoven’s music in a different

setting, in a different form, to listen to Beethoven played “as new music” (Kagel, 1970:

VIII), and not along with new music.

Page 103: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

103

B. The death of the composer

The subtitle of the score of Ludwig van, “Hommage von Beethoven”, is actually a

reversal of the traditional homage, which ought to be a “hommage à”, a tribute to

someone. The act of composing a “hommage von Beethoven”, a tribute by Beethoven,

is actually an oxymoron, since you cannot compose something which is composed by

someone else. Through this oxymoron Kagel seems to be implying that he did not

regard himself as the composer of Ludwig van: the composition is actually, in Kagel’s

own words, “a contribution by Beethoven to contemporary music” (Kagel, 1970: VIII).

Needless to say, this phrase is also an oxymoron: Beethoven could not possibly have

contributed to the music of the second half of the 20th century, at least not knowingly.

He cannot be considered the composer of Ludwig van either, since the composer, as an

author, is supposed to be aware of his/her creations.

The conclusion we should draw from Kagel’s oxymora is given to us by Kagel

himself: “the principle of collage would eventually bring about the abolition of

intellectual authorship” (Kagel, 1970: VIII). There is actually no author for Ludwig van,

or rather, it is not important who the author is. As Roland Barthes claimed in his essay

“The Death of the Author”, also written three years before Kagel’s score was published,

it is not the figure of the Author-God that can give a unique meaning to a text, as

modernist criticism would have it. Whereas modernist criticism regards a text as the

creation of one person and tries to find the meaning of the text by identifying the

author’s intention, in the postmodern world, the text, which is “a tissue of quotations”

(Barthes, 1977: 146), is an independent existence whose meaning depends on each of its

readers. Thus, according to Barthes, the death of the Author signifies the birth of the

Reader.

This is what happens with Ludwig van: since neither Beethoven nor Kagel can

claim authorship of this “text”, which is actually “a tissue of quotations”, as Barthes

would call it, we cannot examine “the composer’s intentions” in order to find its

“meaning”: it is the Reader who gives it a meaning. But as Ludwig van is a musical text,

there is not only one Reader, as in literary texts; with Western art music there can be

two possible “Readers”: the performer, who is the first reader and interpreter of a

musical work, and the listener, who is the ultimate “Reader”. Through the abolition of

Page 104: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

104

intellectual authorship, or the Death of the Composer, if we can adjust Barthes’ famous

phrase to musical terms, it is both the Performer and the Listener who become more

important. The former, because they have to make decisions that would normally be

beyond their responsibilities, and to make music happen out of mere fragments. The

latter, because they can no longer tell whether what they hear is a product of

Beethoven’s, Kagel’s, or the Performer’s creativity; they can no longer listen to music

as conveying a message from an originating genius.

In this sense, Ludwig van is the musical parallel to what Barthes would call a

writerly (“scriptible”) text, as opposed to a readerly (“lisible”) text, both terms used in

his book S/Z (Barthes, 1974). According to Barthes, traditional literature mainly

consists of readerly texts, in which there is a unique meaning, which is pre-determined

by the author, and the reader only has to follow the author’s guidance in order to locate

this meaning. The writerly text, on the contrary, encourages the reader to take active

part in constructing the meaning of the text. It is open to different interpretations and

invites the reader to become the writer by determining their own unique interpretation

and constructing their own version of the work’s meaning. In the same way, the

performer of Ludwig van takes the role of the composer: they are “no longer a consumer

but a producer” (Barthes, 1974: 4).

Page 105: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

105

C. Deconstructing hierarchies, deconstructing Beethoven

With the abolition of “intellectual authorship”, Kagel shows his scepticism towards a

traditional hierarchy of Western art music: that between the composer as a creator of an

artwork, and the performer and listener, as its recipients. Traditional discourse would

look into a musical composition, trying to identify the composer’s message or objective

behind it – which, ironically, is what I have also been trying to do in the course of this

essay. This fact in itself demonstrates just how musicological discourse is composer-

centred: even in analysing a musical work that questions the idea of authorship, we are

obliged to determine the author’s intentions. However, through Ludwig van Kagel shifts

the point of reference from the composer to the performer and the listener, by

demonstrating that the “meaning” is not always determined by the composer. Ludwig

van can have as many meanings as the number of different performances it receives,

multiplied by the number of the listeners attending each of these performances. With

this I mean that each performance of Ludwig van incorporates an interpretation by the

performer, which, in its turn, can be interpreted differently by each member of the

audience. In the end, Kagel, the “composer”, has only set the rules of the game, which

can be played in an indefinite number of ways. The binary opposition between the

composer and the performer, or the composer and the audience, is thus deconstructed,

since, according to Derrida, “to deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the

hierarchy at a given moment” (Derrida, 1981: 41): the composer is no more the

favoured side of this opposition, the one who controls the meaning of a musical work.

Deconstruction is happening in Ludwig van also in another sense, that has to do

with the original definition of “deconstruction” in the Littré dictionary, which Derrida

quotes in “Letter to a Japanese friend”, when he explains how he came up with this term

while trying to translate the Heideggerian word “Destruktion”:

Deconstruction: action of deconstructing. Grammatical term. Disarranging the construction of words in a sentence. […] Deconstruire: 1. To disassemble the parts of a whole. To deconstruct a machine to transport it elsewhere. 2. Grammatical term... To deconstruct verse, rendering it, by the suppression of meter, similar to prose. […] 3. Se deconstruire [to deconstruct itself] ... to lose its construction. […] (Derrida, 1985: 1).

Page 106: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

106

Derrida says that, although these definitions concerned only regions of meaning and not

the totality of what deconstruction aspires to mean, they bore an affinity with what he

meant (voulait-dire, i.e. wanted to say) by using this term. It seems that the Littré entry,

although it can by no means be taken as a definition of Derrida’s deconstruction, served

as a basis for his conception of the term.

The first and third definitions of “deconstruire” (to deconstruct) in the Littré

seem to be very close to what is happening in Ludwig van. Kagel disassembles the parts

of Beethoven’s music, scattering its fragments in the score of Ludwig van in an almost

random way, as I showed in section IV.1.A (first definition, of the transitive verb

“deconstruire”), and, thus, Beethoven’s music loses its construction (third definition, of

the intransitive “se deconstruire”). The fragments are still there, absolutely unaltered,

but deprived of the context in which they are to be found in Beethoven’s music. Thus,

the structure of the music, which has to do with the relations between the various

elements in it, is lost.

In their new environment, all the elements that form Kagel’s collage of

Beethoven’s works – or any collage, for that matter – retain a certain reference to the

context from which they were taken, while at the same time being a part of their new

context. Thus, each element in a collage can be read in two ways. As the Group Mu put

it:

[Collage’s] heterogeneity, even if it is reduced by every operation of composition, imposes itself on the reading as stimulation to produce a signification which could be neither univocal nor stable. Each cited element breaks the continuity or the linearity of the discourse and leads necessarily to a double reading: that of the fragment perceived in relation to its text of origin; that of the same fragment as incorporated into a new whole, a different totality (Group Mu, 1978: 34-5).

Gregory Ulmer, in his article “The object of Post-Criticism”, compares the above

quotation to Derrida’s definition of the “gram” principle, according to which:

Whether in the order of spoken or written discourse, no element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not simply present […] Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent (Derrida, 1981: 26).

Page 107: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

107

According to Ulmer, it is this undecidability between the present and the absent, the text

and the outside of the text, that Derrida tries to achieve in his double reading of texts,

which leads to their deconstruction. In this sense, Ludwig van, as any collage, offers

itself for multiple readings, through the diversity between the contexts from which its

elements are taken and their actual place in the final product.

Page 108: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

108

D. Collage vs. compositional control: Björn Heile’s view

The fact that Kagel surrenders his control of the aesthetic result to the performer is

central to Björn Heile’s assessment of Ludwig van as a postmodern composition. In his

article “Collage vs. Compositional Control: The Interdependency of Modernist and

Postmodernist Approaches in the Work of Mauricio Kagel”, he regards postmodernism

“as something like the counter-image of modernism, embracing everything that

modernism has excluded” (Heile, 2002: 287). Thus, as modernism emphasises unity and

hermetic systems, postmodernism stresses heterogeneity and openness. Heile goes on to

argue that compositional control is a modernist principle, since it ensures unity, whereas

collage is more of a postmodernist practice, since it loosens compositional authority and

involves intertextual references and heterogeneity.

Heile goes through various works by Kagel and shows that, in most of them,

collage and compositional control co-exist, and that modernist and postmodernist

practices are thus intertwined. Therefore, he concludes that it would be nonsensical to

characterise these works as modern or postmodern, since they combine techniques of

both. It seems that, when Heile refers to postmodernism, he refers to the postmodernism

of reaction, and ignores the postmodernism of resistance, to use Hal Foster’s division of

postmodern culture. According to Foster, the postmodernism of reaction, voiced mainly

by neoconservatives, repudiates modernism to celebrate the status quo; I would agree

with Heile that Kagel cannot by any means be classified in this category, since he never

rejected modernism and the avant-garde. On the other hand, the postmodernism of

resistance “seeks to deconstruct modernism and resist the status quo” (Foster, 1998:

xii); a very important aspect of postmodernism of resistance is that it is not an anti-

modernist turn towards tradition. Instead of rejecting modernist techniques, it embraces

them and develops them, while at the same time incorporating aspects of other

traditions and eras and adding new practices; thus it deconstructs modernism from

within, using its own practices.

Besides, by creating pairs of opposed techniques and values between modernism

and postmodernism, Heile constructs hierarchical binary oppositions: a modernist

composer would favour compositional control and not collage, a postmodernist would

do the opposite. I believe it is against the concept of postmodernism to construct a

Page 109: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

109

hierarchical system of its values. From a postmodern point of view, this opposition

would be undecidable; a postmodernist composer would anyway not favour the one side

of such an opposition, and that is what Heile claims Kagel does in his music: not

showing any preference to modernist over postmodernist techniques, and vice-versa. In

my view, Heile’s argument brings us closer to considering Kagel a postmodernist

composer, rather than undecided between modernism and postmodernism.

In any case, Heile seems to exclude Ludwig van from his conclusion, since it is

actually a collage – or a metacollage, to use Kagel’s term – with no compositional

control whatsoever. He acknowledges that Ludwig van “has been hailed as a specimen

case of a postmodernist music in the neoconservative sense”, since it consists of “little

more than a collage of pre-existing music from the canon” (Heile, 2002: 291), but

points out that it is an isolated case in Kagel’s work. Indeed, it is the only composition

by Kagel that is based only on pre-composed material, with no hint of modern musical

language, and the only one with such an open form. Therefore, even Heile, who is

reluctant to label Kagel as a postmodernist, regards Ludwig van as an example of

postmodern music.

Page 110: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

110

E. Jonathan Kramer’s conception of postmodern music

In the assessment of whether Ludwig van is a postmodern composition, it seems

necessary to include Jonathan Kramer’s article “The Nature and Origins of Musical

Postmodernism” (Kramer, 2002: 13-24), which, for all the controversy around it, is one

of the most widely known articles on postmodern music. Kramer defies the popular

belief which, according to him, “identifies as postmodern any composition that was

written recently but sounds as if it were not” (Kramer, 2002: 14), and follows the

thought of critical theorists such as Umberto Eco and Jean-François Lyotard in his

attempt to identify the nature of postmodern music. Finally, he compiles a list of sixteen

characteristics (Kramer, 2002: 16-7), which, in his opinion, postmodern music tends to

exhibit. It is clearly far too ambitious a task to reduce such a wide, complicated and

controversial term as “musical postmodernism” to sixteen characteristics, and, in many

ways, Kramer’s list appears too simple to be reliable. Nevertheless, it provides a useful

reflection on the general directions of postmodern music, and one of the very few

thorough approaches to this subject.

Below are some of the characteristics from Kramer’s list which I find relevant to

Ludwig van. Many of them have already been discussed in this section, and I do not, by

any means, intend to consider the so-called “checklist approach” valid in proving that

Ludwig van is a postmodern composition, something that even Kramer himself warns

against. That said, I find it worth including a brief discussion of some of the

characteristics.

According to Kramer, postmodern music:

- is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a

break and an extension

This was already discussed in my criticism of Heile’s view of the relationship between modernism and postmodernism (section IV.2.D). Here Kramer highlights the difference between postmodernism and antimodernism.

- is, on some level and in some way, ironic

Irony is one of the main characteristics of Kagel’s works, and it is apparent in his considering Ludwig van an “Hommage von Beethoven”, or “Beethoven’s

Page 111: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

111

contribution to contemporary music”: the idea of Beethoven composing a homage to himself or writing music in a 20th-century style is ironic because of its absurdity.

- does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present

“Ludwig van […] attempts to say to the interpreter: the music of the past should also be performed as music of the present” (Kagel, 1970: IX).

- shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity

As discussed in the previous section, Kagel does not determine the structure of Ludwig van, leaving it either to the performer or to chance to determine it.

- includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures

Obviously, Ludwig van is made up only of quotations from an earlier musical culture.

- considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music

Kagel encourages the use of tape recordings and electro-acoustic alteration of the instrumental sound in his instructions for performing Ludwig van. Moreover, in his recording of the work he makes wide use of studio techniques of alteration of the sound.

- distrusts binary oppositions

This was discussed in section IV.2.C, “Deconstructing hierarchies, deconstructing Beethoven”.

- includes fragmentations and discontinuities

Once again, Ludwig van is obviously a composition entirely made out of unconnected fragments.

- locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

As shown in section IV.2.B, “The Death of the Composer”.

The only criterion for the selection of the above characteristics is how relevant

they are to Ludwig van. There are some more items in the list that could also be applied

to Ludwig van, but only depending on the performance: for example, according to

Kramer, postmodern music “(7) avoids totalising forms (e.g. does not want entire pieces

Page 112: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

112

to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)” (Kramer, 2002: 16). It is up to

the performers whether the whole performance of Ludwig van will be of a homogenous

texture or style; as shown earlier, it can be played using only Kagel’s score, in which

case the sound would more or less be homogenous in its indeterminacy – that is to say,

indeterminate throughout – or it can also incorporate some more structured collage and

some intact performances of Beethoven’s music, in which case the result would be

heterogeneous. Kagel, for his part, avoids prescribing a “formal mold”, and at the same

time does not impose heterogeneity to the performers.11 Some other items in the list

could not be applicable to Ludwig van, due to the nature of this work: for example,

Kramer argues that postmodern music “(4) challenges barriers between ‘high’ and ‘low’

styles”. Although within Beethoven’s music there are works that can be considered to

be in a higher style than others – for example, we could not help considering the late

piano sonatas more significant and of “higher style” than the Twenty-five Scottish songs,

op.25 – Kramer probably means more radical differences of style, and therefore I

judged this characteristic as not applicable to Ludwig van.

Overall, and for all its simplicity, I believe that Kramer’s list does present a

valuable general idea of the nature of postmodern music. And, as shown above, most of

the characteristics in the list are applicable to Ludwig van. Of course, I would not

consider this as proof, but it certainly is one more piece of evidence of Ludwig van’s

postmodern nature.

11 The issue of indeterminacy in Ludwig van will be addressed in section IV.3.A.

Page 113: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

113

3. Comparison to artists and art movements of its time

A. Experimentalism

In the previous section, and in my attempt to point out the postmodern characteristics of

Ludwig van, I showed its connection to other works of its time which exemplify the

term intertextuality. However, what makes it special among other referential works of

its time is that, whereas most of them are conventionally notated scores which

determined where each quotation would be used and how it would be played, in Ludwig

van, Kagel does not take any decision as to how the material from Beethoven’s music

will be used in any performance of it. In this sense, Ludwig van is truly an experimental

work: in this section I will try to investigate its relation to the categories of experimental

composition which I presented in section II.2.A.

As I showed in section IV.1, the making of the score was largely based on

chance: there seems to be no specific plan as to which of Beethoven’s works should be

next to which; on the contrary, the evidence shows that he probably did it in a random

way. But on the other hand, the fact that consecutive pages of the same Beethoven

works appear next to each other often in the score, means that he did not apply any

chance techniques in order to generate the score. Therefore, it seems that Kagel pasted

the Beethoven scores on the walls and furniture of the music room in a “random” way

just because the order of pages did not matter to him, and not because he aimed for a

chance result; otherwise, he would probably have done it using chance operations and

he would have avoided consecutive pages appearing together in the score, or at least it

would not have happened so many times. Therefore we cannot label Ludwig van a

chance composition, since it does not seem to be in Kagel’s intentions to leave the

combination of quotations to chance and avoid any interference of other factors: if it

was, he would have done it in a much more effective way.

On the other hand, it is self-evident that Ludwig van is an indeterminate

composition – with respect to its performance: the instrumentation, the duration, the

order in which the quotations are to be played, the speed, the timbre are all left

undetermined by Kagel in the score. And in a way it could be argued that it exhibits

certain aspects of the text score: its instructions are many, and of great importance,

Page 114: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

114

whereas the score itself can be done without. In this sense, Ludwig van seems to have

something in common with Stockhausen’s intuitive works, since all he gives the

performers is very general instructions as to how to approach the material, and since he

grants them a lot of freedom. Nevertheless, Ludwig van does not consist only of words:

even if Kagel’s score is not used, the score is the total of Beethoven’s works. Therefore,

I do not believe that we can label Ludwig van a text score, however important its

instructions are.

Ludwig van is an indeterminate work with respect to its performance: what

remains to be answered is in which tendency of the ones I described in section II.2.B it

belongs: whether Kagel left some aspects undetermined because he wanted to avoid any

trace of subjectivity (the “American” tendency, according to Griffiths), or because he

wanted to leave space for the performers’ subjectivity into any realisation of the piece

(the “European” tendency). My opinion is that he leaves this question open, depending

on the way the piece is approached. If the score of Ludwig van – and no other

Beethoven scores – is used, the performance is, to a great extent left to chance, since the

order, the instrumentation, and even the material that will be played is not determined

beforehand. Of course, even in this case some aspects of the performers’ personalities

will affect the result, but this can be said of any such composition. On the other hand,

Kagel does leave the performers the freedom to shape their performance however they

want, even by omitting the score and devising a collage of Beethoven works

themselves. In the latter case, it is obviously the performers’ subjectivity which will

determine all aspects of the realisation. So in a way it can be argued that Ludwig van

can be realised as a work of either of the two tendencies; nevertheless, since it is the

performers who have to decide whether to use Kagel’s score in a random way or make

their own collage, this is already one aspect of the performance that they have to

determine. Therefore I believe that Kagel’s Ludwig van is closer to the “European”

tendency in indeterminate works. This argument is further supported by his own

recording and performances of the piece, in which, as I will argue in sections IV.4.C

and IV.5.A, he did not use his own score but recomposed his own versions of Ludwig

van: therefore, when he approached his composition as a performer, he avoided leaving

its realisation to chance. As Bjorn Heile put it, “while he [Kagel] flirted with the idea of

anti-art and of giving up authoritarian control, he was probably too much of an aesthete

to actually do so” (Heile, 2006: 34).

Page 115: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

115

B. Fluxus, Conceptual Art

Ludwig van also exhibits some of the characteristics of the Fluxus movement, which

was influenced by John Cage and his lectures at the New School for Social Research in

New York. Kagel himself was involved in this movement for part of his life, and, as I

mentioned in section III.1, the artists who designed the rooms of the Beethovenhaus –

apart from the music room – belonged to it. Although there is not any official definition

of Fluxus, George Maciunas, one of its chief figures, proposed the following:

FLUX ART – non art – amusement forgoes distinction between art and non-art, forgoes artists’ indispensability, exclusiveness, individuality, ambition, forgoes all pretension towards significance, variety, inspiration, skill, complexity, profundity, greatness, institutional and commodity value (From a Fluxus manifesto by George Maciunas, date unknown, quoted in Saper, 1998: 139).

As shown by this manifesto, the Fluxus artists were against the artistic establishment

and its elitist attitude concerning what is and what is not art and who is eligible to make

art happen. In many ways they can be considered one of the expressions of anti-

authoritarianism in art, since they despise all kinds of hierarchies in the art world. Their

performances consisted of simple happenings which anyone could do, usually by

following some simple instructions. In Ludwig van, Kagel similarly questions key

concepts of Western art music by letting the performers play Beethoven’s music in their

own way, regardless of its institutional value and its significance, and without having to

demonstrate the skill and the virtuosity traditionally required of them. Moreover, by

leaving all the important decisions to the performers, Kagel prompts them to act as

composers, distrusting the idea that special skills are needed in order to make music.

It is, however, important to stress out that unlike Fluxus happenings, Ludwig van

cannot be performed by everyone: it is necessary that the performers can at least read

music and play an instrument or sing. Furthermore, according to Heile, Kagel never

regarded himself as a member of Fluxus, and found many of their happenings

amateurish (Heile, 2006: 35). However, Ludwig van, being a unique case in his output,

and not a Fluxus happening itself, seems to be significantly influenced by their

philosophy, at least in a conceptual way.

Page 116: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

116

Many of the Fluxus artworks are considered as conceptual art, a term coined by

Sol LeWitt in his article “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”, published in Artforum in June

1967. According to LeWitt:

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. […] It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman (LeWitt, 1967; quoted in Wood, 2002: 38).

In other words, conceptual art is more about the concept and its perception by the

audience than about its realisation, more about the idea behind the artwork than about

the artwork itself as an object and its aesthetic value. The impact it has on the audience

does not have to do with how it is constructed, performed or executed, but with its

original conception.

Similarly, according to Kagel, Ludwig van is “a concept rather than a

composition completed or a work-in-progress” (Kagel, 1970: IX). The “composition” of

Ludwig van was clearly all about conceiving a score which is a random collage of

Beethoven’s scores, whereas the making of the score – that is, making the collage and

taking photographs of it – was merely a perfunctory affair, to use a phrase from the

definition above. Even the performance of Ludwig van can also be a perfunctory affair,

if someone decides to use only the score –and not other pieces of Beethoven’s music –

and follow Kagel’s instructions. The point in which Ludwig van differs from conceptual

artworks is that Kagel gives the performers the option to make a more elaborate

performance of Ludwig van, which would not be inferior to the concept, and would not

be a mere perfunctory affair. And, as mentioned before and will be shown in section

IV.4, this is exactly what he did in his recording of Ludwig van.

Page 117: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

117

C. Borges

Like several of Kagel’s works, Ludwig van exhibits two of the characteristics that are

common in the work of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who was Kagel’s

English literature lecturer at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores in Buenos Aires

and who seems to have been a major influence on the latter’s work (Heile, 2006: 11).

One of these characteristics is the fascination with the concept of infinity in Borges’

works. In “The Library of Babel” (Borges, 1964: 62-8) he describes a library with a

possibly infinite number of rooms, which contains all books that can be written by

combining the letters of the Latin alphabet in every possible way, therefore including all

the books ever written and all the books that will ever be written. And in “The Book of

Sand”, he describes a book which has an infinite number of pages and can never be

opened on the same page twice. I believe there are similarities between these short

stories and Kagel’s Ludwig van: of course, the score can by no means be considered as

infinite, but the possible interpretations of it certainly are. Especially since Kagel allows

the performer to use any fragment of Beethoven’s works, however short it may be,

almost everything is possible: if, for instance, we just take single notes from

Beethoven’s works and reassemble them in certain ways, we can reconstruct any

musical composition, from Bach’s Kunst der Fuge to Ligeti’s Atmosphères, to name

two random examples. Therefore, on a theoretical level, Ludwig van is like “The

Library of Babel”: it can contain all the works that can ever be composed using the

notes of the chromatic scale.

Another characteristic that Ludwig van shares with some of Borges’ writings is

their relation to tradition. “Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote” (Borges, 1964: 49-56)

is a literary essay on a non-existent author of the 20th century, whose most important

work was a re-writing of two chapters of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, word for word. The

essay is so absurd that it actually tries to convince the reader that Menard’s Quixote is

superior to Cervantes’, but it ends with a very interesting conclusion:

Menard (perhaps without wanting to) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the halting and rudimentary art of reading: this new technique is that of the deliberate anachronism and the erroneous attribution. This technique, whose applications are infinite, prompts us to go through the Odyssey as if it were posterior to the Aeneid and the book Le jardin du Centaure of Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier. This technique fills the most

Page 118: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

118

placid works with adventure. To attribute the Imitatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand Céline or to James Joyce, is this not a sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual indications? (Borges, 1964: 56, translated by James E. Irby)

Similarly, in Ludwig van, Kagel invites the performer to re-compose Beethoven, albeit

not note by note, as that could only happen in Borges’ fiction. He proposes the same

new technique of reading that Menard invented: the fact that he asks the performer to

re-construct Beethoven and at the same time brands Ludwig van as a tribute by

Beethoven, is, indeed “deliberate anachronism and … erroneous attribution”, to use

Borges’ words. Listening to Beethoven’s music as music of today and as if it was by

Kagel – after all, he is officially the composer of Ludwig van – prompts us to “read”

Beethoven in new and adventurous ways.

The similarity between Borges’ and Kagel’s relation to tradition is also shown in

the former’s essay “The Argentine Writer and Tradition”. In this, Borges argues that it

is not only their local gauchesque poetry that Argentine writers draw upon, but the

whole of Western culture. He believes that their right to this tradition is “greater than

that which the inhabitants of one or another Western nation might have” (Borges, 1964:

177), and in order to support his argument, he brings up the example of the pre-

eminence of Jews in Western culture and of the Irish in English culture. The reason of

this pre-eminence, according to Borges, is that “they act within that culture and, at the

same time, do not feel tied to it by any special devotion”, and, thus, they find it easier to

make innovations:

I believe that we Argentines, we South Americans in general, are in an analogous situation; we can handle all European themes, handle them without superstition, with an irreverence which can have, and already does have, fortunate consequences (Borges, 1964: 177, translated by James E. Irby).

Kagel, being an Argentine and Jewish at the same time, is an example of Borges’ view.

His experiments with Western music tradition, including the film and the composition

Ludwig van, were considered very provocative, and it can be argued that very few

Europeans could be as free as he was with this tradition. And it is partly this lack of

superstition that made him such an innovative force within the European avant-garde.

Page 119: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

119

4. Kagel’s recording of Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven

Kagel made his own recording of Ludwig van between 2 and 11 January 1970 for

Deutsche Grammophon. The musicians who took part in the recording were two

singers, two pianists and a string quartet: Carlos Feller, bass, William Pearson, baritone,

Bruno Canino and Frederic Rzewski, pianos, Saschko Gawriloff and Egbert Ojstersek,

violins, Gérard Ruymen, viola, and Siegfried Palm, cello. The recording, released by

Deutsche Grammophon under the serial number 2530014, is about 52 minutes – 26 on

each side.12 At the Sacher Foundation there is a 65-page notebook of handwritten notes

that Kagel made while working on the recording. This includes some general outlines of

what he wanted to achieve in it, some ideas on how he would combine different

Beethoven works, plus a detailed plan of the editing he would do.

I will start this section by giving a translation of some of these outlines, as well

as a brief discussion of them. Afterwards I will give a list of the quotations Kagel used

in it, and finally I will discuss my conclusions based on my findings concerning Kagel’s

recording of Ludwig van.

12 The recording is now out of print, and can only be accessed in libraries or obtained from second-hand sellers on the internet. Moreover, there is a CD copy of the recording at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel.

Page 120: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

120

A. Kagel’s notes

Some of Kagel’s notes are very general and have to do with what he wanted to achieve

through Ludwig van, how he wanted Ludwig van to function. For instance, at some

point, he calls the work a thank-you song (“Dankgesang”) to Beethoven, which shows

that, in spite of his irony, Kagel felt great respect for Beethoven. The alterations to

which he subjects Beethoven’s music are there only to highlight it from a different point

of view: as he says, “An alienation of Beethoven is maybe necessary in order to show

the biting [“das beissende” in German, which can also mean acrid, caustic] and the

avantgardist element in his music”. In other words, if he treated Beethoven’s music as

music of the present, it was only in order to show that it is always contemporary.

Another function of the recording, according to Kagel’s notes, is that it “should be an

introduction so that other players undertake [Ludwig van] themselves”. Once again, it

becomes apparent that he did not see Ludwig van as his own intellectual property: on

the contrary, he did the recording in order to encourage other people to play

Beethoven’s music “as music of the present”, to use his own words.

Some other notes have to do with the interpretation of Beethoven’s music. For

instance, contrary to the recording tradition and its obsession with flawless and thus

superhuman performances, Kagel writes: “Bad interpretations have rights too...!” At

another point he notes: “The player as ‘human’ (breathing, in order to sing etc.)”, once

more highlighting the fact that he did not want the recording to be perfect or divine, but

human. In general, he seems to want to highlight the role of the performer in music

making, in reaction to the conception of the performer as a mere conveyor of a divine

music to the audience, who should be as faithful to the text as possible: “Instead of

falsely understood faithfulness to the work [of Beethoven], one should incorporate

contemporary changes of the concept of the performer in interpretations of the music of

past times”. In other words, he claims that the concept of faithfulness to the composer is

widely misunderstood, and that it prevents performers from putting their own creativity

into the works they play, as it assumes that the performer’s role is inferior to the one of

the composer; Ludwig van is an opportunity for the performers to overthrow this

hierarchy and treat the music of the past with more freedom.

Page 121: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

121

There is also a section in Kagel’s notebook which is entitled “Formal Criteria”,

in which he writes different ideas on how to treat different aspects of the music, such as

tempo, tonalities, volume etc. Some, but by no means all, of these were used in the

recording; it seems that he wrote this section quite early in the procedure, before Ludwig

van took its final shape in the recording studio. Some of these notes are about

interpretation, such as “like beginners”, in which he invites the players to record a “bad”

interpretation, or “No collage, only an alteration of the interpretation praxis”, in which

he calls for the performance of a single work, but probably in an unusual way.

But most of the notes are about ways of editing the recorded material: “tempo

differences, which, layered on top of each other, produce a canon-like polyphony” is

about playing the same work simultaneously but in different tempi; “Concert guide,

thematic analysis, repetition as a source of chopping [the music] up. For example,

joining together only the themes, the second themes and principal motives from one

piece. Like analytical lectures on radio, but without commentary” suggests an editing

procedure that would leave only the thematic material on the recording and would throw

away all the linking sections of a work. There are many more notes on how to edit and

regulate the recorded material, and interestingly enough, Kagel did not use all of them

in the final version – none of the ones I quoted here appear to have been used in the

recording. There is no information as to why he did not use all the ideas he wrote in his

notebook, and how he chose the ways in which he edited the material. What is

important to note is that he intended to achieve what he wanted mainly by editing, and

less through the performances themselves. The version of Ludwig van on the record

cannot ever be performed live: it is a composition that was actually shaped on the

editing table, rather than in the recording studio.

Regarding the overall form that Kagel wanted to give the recording, there is

surprisingly little information in the notebook. There are only two phrases which are

worth mentioning, the first of which is: “Ludwig van is based on the 32 ‘Diabelli

Variations’ (or 33?) [...] The Beethovenian variations (changes) are varied (changed) in

a transformed way, so an augmentation of Beethovenian technique takes place here.” In

other words, Kagel claims that he actually transforms Beethoven’s music in the way the

latter transformed Diabelli’s Waltz, and thus Kagel’s recording is a transformation of a

transformation; in this sense, he believes that he augments Beethoven’s technique. The

Page 122: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

122

Diabelli Variations are also mentioned in Kagel’s interview with Karl Faust, where he

says that:

[Ludwig van’s] overall form is based on the 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, op.120. I translated each of Beethoven’s variation techniques into the terms of my compositional methods, thus altering Beethoven’s music in a manner similar to that in which he altered Diabelli’s theme. The outcome was a transformation on a secondary plane, though without a constantly recurring subject (Kagel, 1970: IX).

It is very difficult to find out how exactly he did that, especially since, as he himself

admits, there is no “constantly recurring subject”; in other words, without transforming

one specific theme, but rather all of Beethoven’s music. What is really surprising is that,

apart from the two mentions of the Diabelli Variations quoted above, there is no

evidence whatsoever in his notes on the recording as to how exactly he applied

Beethoven’s variation techniques to Beethoven’s music. We can either suppose that

Kagel used another notebook which was eventually lost, or that the connection to the

Diabelli Variations is quite loose, in which case he did not need to keep notes on how

exactly he would use them.

The other clue which Kagel gives us to the form of the recording is: “Record

side A or B, B or A”. Similarly, in his editing plan he refers to one side of the record as

“Side A or B” and to the other as “Side B or A”. It is not clear whether by this he meant

that it was not important which side would be first in the final editing or that he would

actually leave it to the audience to decide, by labelling the sides the same way (Side A

or B, B or A) in the final product. I would assume it is the latter: in my opinion it would

make more sense for Kagel to leave the decision to the audience, if he did not want to

make it himself. But, for some reason, in the final product the record sides are very

clearly labelled as Side A and Side B. Whatever Kagel’s intention was concerning the

labelling of the record sides, it is surprising that it did not make any difference to him

which side of the record would be first and which would be last: although he claimed

that the recording had a very specific form, which was based on one of Beethoven’s

forms, he did not mind reversing the order of its two halves. It seems that he did not use

the Diabelli Variations as a model for the structure of the recording, but rather as a sort

of inspiration on ways of transformation; in other words, that he just used some of

Beethoven’s variation techniques as a basis in order to develop his own transformation

Page 123: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

123

techniques in the recording. This is what he seems to be saying in his interview with

Stephen Loy:

SL: You set that up I understand based on the Diabelli variations, in some way. Can you elaborate on that? MK: Yeah. For me, you don’t hear the Diabelli variations. But I analysed the different variations of Beethoven, lets see… what kind of a… is it ornamental variation, is it rhythmic variation, is it structural variation. This. And I projected this in my Ludwig van. This was exactly… You don’t hear… SL: You don’t hear the separate sections. MK: No, no. I was not interested in the…Much more interesting was the projection of the structural devices on my piece (Loy, 2006: 361).

Apart from the notebook, there is surprisingly little material concerning the

recording at the Paul Sacher Foundation. The only other items worth mentioning are

two letters, addressed to the pianists who took part in the recording, Bruno Canino and

Frederic Rzewski, sent in November 1969. The letters contain some information

regarding the dates of the recording, and a list of Beethoven piano sonatas that the

pianists would have to play: op.90, op.101, op.106, op.109, op.110, and op.111.

Interestingly enough, Kagel reassures the pianists that they do not have to play these

sonatas perfectly, since Beethoven himself must have played wrong notes too! There are

no copies of any correspondence with the other musicians who took part in the

recording, maybe because they were living in Köln, so Kagel had personal contact with

them. Finally, through an e-mail correspondence with Bruno Canino, I found out that, as

I had expected, Kagel was the one who determined the works that the musicians would

play, and often the way they would perform them as well. The musicians did not take

part in the editing procedure and it was difficult for Canino to recognise his (their) work

in the final product. What is also striking is that Canino did not know anything about the

connection between the structure of the recording and the Diabelli Variations, which

makes even more plausible the hypothesis that this connection was in fact quite loose.

Page 124: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

124

B. Structure of the recording, list of quotations from Beethoven’s works

Below is a list of the quotations Kagel used for the recording. As in the list of

quotations in the score, I will not include the fragments that are very short, as most of

them cannot be identified. The timings in the list are according to my copy of the LP of

Ludwig van.13 Latin numbers refer to the movements. Bar numbers are added only when

it is clear where the extracts begin and end; therefore, when they are not specified, it is

either because the extracts fade in and out very gradually, or because whole movements

are included.

Side A 0’08 – 1’28 Piano Sonata No.29, op.106, Largo-Allegro-Tempo I 0’18 – 1’29 Violin Sonata No.9, op.47, second Variation, b.1-8, violin part only 1’24 – 1’40 Various cadences, piano (E major and E minor) and violin (F major) 1’43 – 2’06 String Quartet No.9, op.59 no.3, II, 8 last bars (cello pizzicato) 2’09 – 2’18 Cadences, piano (G major) 2’15 – 3’15 String Quartet No.9, op.59 no.3, II, 8 last bars, (cello pizzicato)

Sparse staccato piano chords 3’21 – 3’35 A descending sequence of dissonant chords, piano and strings 3’35 – 4’59 Cello Sonata No.2, op.5 no.2, I, b. 7-17

Violin Sonata No.10, op.96, b.19-36 4’49 – 5’27 Long dissonant chord, strings 5’23 – 7’56 Piano Sonata No.30, op.109, III, Theme and first variation 5’31 – 7’47 Short motives from various chamber music works, violins and cello 6’43 – 7’56 Sparse cadences, piano and strings 7’57 – 8’33 Staccato chords, strings 8’00 – 8’33 Ascending C major scale in canon, two pianos 8’36 – 10’00 “Wo die Berge so blau”, op.98 no.2, voice and piano

13 Therefore the timings would be different if I had used the recording at the Sacher Foundation, since the latter, although it is identical to the LP, is divided in four tracks instead of two.

Page 125: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

125

8’57 – 10’27 String Quartet No.7, op.59 no.1 III, b.23-40, cello occasionally doubled

by voice 10’19 – 10’59 Slowly descending chromatic scale, piano

Col legno chords, strings 11’00 – 16’45 Fragments of Piano Trio No.5, op.70 no.1 (Geistertrio), II,

unsynchronised, piano, violin and cello 11’31 – 12’24 Sparse cadences, piano 15’09 – 17’29 Piano Sonata No.30, op.109, III, occasionally doubled by singer

Short motives from various chamber music works, violins and cello, occasionally doubled by singer

17’04 – 17’59 Long dissonant chords, strings 17’32 – 19’13 Fragments from Piano Sonata No.32, op.111, I 17’59 – 18’35 Repeated chords, strings 18’35 – 18’56 Unisono chord, strings 18’14 – 21’19 String Quartet No.15, op.132, V, b.27-89 19’20 – 21’43 Occasional cadences, strings and piano 21’46 – 22’45 Piano Sonata No.31, op.110, III, b.1-5 21’46 – 22’45 Piano Sonata No.32, op.111, II, b.65-76 22’20 – end Quickly alternating fragments of various works, such as String Quartet No.8, op.59 no.2, II Piano Sonata No.29, op.106, I

Piano Sonata No.30, op.110, III Piano Sonata No.32, op.111, II Use of several studio effects Side B 0’05 – 6’45 Piano Sonata No.29, op.106, III (b. 1-60) 0’07 – 5’11 String Quartet No.14, op.131, IV, viola part (the whole movement) 1’04 – 1’44 In questa tomba oscura, WoO 133 3’04 – 7’14 “Gottes Macht und Vorsehung” from Sechs Lieder nach gedichten von

Gellert, op.48, speaking voice String Quartet No.15, op.132, III (b. 1-31)

Page 126: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

126

7’12 – 12’39 Piano Sonata op.109, III, sixth Variation 7’12 – 11’38 Piano Trio op.97, I, fragments, 2 violins and a cello 12’47 – 14’38 String Quartet No.7, op.59 no.1, III, b. 110-133, IV, b. 1-7 13’01 – 14’18 Merkenstein, op.100, 2 singers 14’40 – 16’01 Cello Sonata No.5, op.102 no.2, II, b. 25-39 14’58 – 15’59 Violin Sonata No.5, op.24, II, b. 59-73, violin part 16’01 – 16’35 Cello Sonata No.5, op.102 no.2, I, b. 129-147 16’01 – 16’35 Violin Sonata No.5, op.24, I, b. 70-83, violin part 16’37 – 19’23 Quick alternation of very short fragments, mainly cadences 17’41 – 18’36 “Gott ist mein Lied”, op.48 no.5 19’24 – 19’49 Cello Sonata No.3, op.69, II, b.161-188 19’27 – 19’46 Violin Sonata No.2, op.12 no.2, I, b. 204-222 19’53 – 20’27 Cello Sonata No.5, op.102 no.1, I, b. 135-153 19’46 – 20’25 Violin Sonata No.4, op.23, II, b.24-46 20’25 – 21’16 String Quartet No.14, op.131, VII, b.329-388 20’40 – 21’13 Piano Sonata No.30, op.109, III, third Variation, prepared piano at some

points 21’13 – 22’06 String Quartet No.14, op.131, V, b. 58-66, very slow 21’47 – 23’36 Rehearsal for String Quartet No.14, op.131, V, amateur playing,

unsynchronised, tuning sounds, dialogues 23’38 – 25’51 Piano Sonata No.31, op.110, I

String Quartet No.14, op.131, V “Diese Wolken in den Höhen”, op.98 no.4 Constantly interrupted sound

25’51 – 26’05 Three cadences in F major, piano Cadence in E major, piano Cadence in B flat major, string quartet

Page 127: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

127

C. Notes on the recording

Example 2. Kagel’s editing plan for Ludwig van, pp.1-2, copies obtained from the Paul Sacher

Foundation

Page 128: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

128

The most striking thing about Kagel’s recording of Ludwig van: Hommage von

Beethoven is that he does not appear to have used his own score at all. This is certain for

two reasons: firstly because there is not a single moment in the recording in which it

sounds as though he delivered pages of the score to the musicians and asked them to

play what they saw at will: on the contrary, his recording sounds quite planned.

Secondly, because in his notebook on the recording there is a very detailed plan on how

exactly he would do the editing, the first two pages of which are shown in Example 2.

In it we can see that there are three different audio tracks in the recording, all at the

same time, which fade in and out according to the crescendo (<) and diminuendo (>)

symbols over each track. The numbers in circles correspond to different takes Kagel

recorded in the studio, whereas the letters Q, V, C and K stand for the string quartets,

the violin sonatas, the cello sonatas and the piano sonatas that he used respectively. The

works used, as well as all the takes recorded, are listed in separate pages of his

notebook. But not all takes consist of long fragments of specific works: some of them

contain specific features of Beethoven’s music, such as cadences (“Schlußkadenzen”) or

tenuto chords (“Tenuto Akkord”). It is obvious that he would not have had such control

over the recorded material had he used his own score of Ludwig van.

What we can conclude from the recording and from Kagel’s notes is that he

asked the musicians to perform specific passages from Beethoven’s music in specific

ways – which are not always the usual ways of performing this music – and then made a

montage of the recorded material. It seems as if the score of Ludwig van: Hommage von

Beethoven and Kagel’s recording of it are two different artworks. On the other hand,

there is no rule in the score’s instructions saying, for instance, that at least one page of

the score should be used; therefore the performers are entitled to avoid this score, as

long as every single note heard in the performance is by Beethoven. And this is the case

with Kagel’s recording, so it can be considered as one version of the score, although it

does not seem to use it at all.

Other conclusions that arise from the recording are the following:

The fragments used are not always short:

Whereas in the score most of the fragments which are discernible are not very long –

usually not more than ten bars – some of the fragments in the recording last several

Page 129: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

129

minutes. For example, at the beginning of Side B (or A), one of the pianists is playing

the opening sixty bars of the third movement of the Piano Sonata, op.106, which last a

little less than seven minutes. These longer fragments are usually heard along with other

fragments, but there are still some moments in the recording where one work by

Beethoven is left alone for some time, as, for instance, the third movement of the Piano

Sonata, op.109, at 15’09-17’04 of Side A. Compared to the music room sequence of the

film, where the music heard is much closer to the score than in the recording, since the

musicians are actually reading music off the walls of the room, it is obvious that in the

recording Kagel wanted Beethoven’s music to be clearer and more present: in the music

room sequence all we get to hear is a chaotic mixture of melodies, whereas in the LP

there are several moments of clarity.

Selection of Beethoven’s works

As we can presume from the letter Kagel wrote to the pianists who took part in the

recording, Canino and Rzewsky, mentioned in section IV.4.A, he had a very clear idea

of which Beethoven works he wanted to include in the recording. And looking at the list

of the quotations above, we can see that he used: Piano Sonatas, op.106, 109, 110 and

111, Violin Sonatas, op.12 no.2, op.24 and op.47, Cello Sonatas, op.69, op.102 nos.1

and 2, String Quartets, op.59, op.1, 2 and 3 and op.131, and Songs, op.48, op.98 nos.2

and 4, op.100 and WoO 133 (there might be some more that I have not identified, but

that is probably because the fragments used are too short). In the case of piano sonatas,

it is clear that he deliberately used the four last ones, probably because they are the most

well known and respected. With the violin sonatas, he chose the second, one of the

middle ones which is very well-known – the Frühlingssonate – and the penultimate one,

which is also very famous – the Kreuzersonate. From the cello sonatas he chose the

three last ones, more or less as he did with the piano sonatas. He chose the three

Razumovsky Quartets, from Beethoven’s middle period and op.131, arguably the most

famous quartet of his late period. Finally, the selection of songs used is quite wide: early

and late opus numbers, one posthumous song, songs about love and death. Overall,

there seems to be a preference for compositions of the late period of Beethoven’s life,

but as we can see from the list above, this is not exclusive. It is very possible that Kagel

chose these works mainly because he liked them, since there seems to be no particular

logic behind this selection.

Page 130: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

130

Techniques of transformation through performance

In some cases, the alteration of the initial material (Beethoven’s music) takes place

through performance. Some ways in which this happens are the following:

• At several places, different works by Beethoven were recorded simultaneously.

This is obvious both because they are registered as one track in Kagel’s notes,

and because most of the times the players play in the same tempo, although they

play different works. For example, at the beginning of Side B, one of the pianists

is playing the third movement of the Piano Sonata, op.106, while the violist is

playing the fourth movement of the String Quartet, op.131. The fact that both

movements have the same key signature (the piano plays in F sharp minor and

the viola in A major) and that they are played in the same tempo makes a large

part of this “chamber music” sound more or less consonant, so that it becomes

confusing for the listener: what is heard is very synchronised and almost tonal,

and for a few seconds one might be tempted to think it is actually one work; but

on the other hand some of the harmonies sound strange and non-Beethovenian.

Overall, this is a very sophisticated approach to collage, as the musicians

perform as if it is not a collage.

• At 21’47 of Side B (or A) Kagel includes some tuning sounds and rehearsal

dialogues, as well as some amateur playing. This comes as quite unexpected,

and out of context: the first 45 minutes of the recording do not contain anything

like that. It seems that, as in the case of earlier works, like Sur scène and Sonant,

he incorporates fragments of musical life into the artwork itself, breaking the

borders between music and the process of its creation.

• At 11’00 – 16’45 of Side A (or B), we can hear a very special performance of

the second movement of the Piano Trio, op.70 no.1, widely known as the Ghost

Trio. In this case Kagel asked his performers “to play their parts independently

of each other but at the same time, […] neither chronologically nor non-

chronologically, but in fragments and in whatever way they pleased”. He did

that in order to show that Beethoven is always modern in essence. It is true that,

in this rendition, the Ghost Trio sounds very radical and extremely haunting,

much more than the original version. It is, as Kagel puts it, “a Ghost Trio raised

to a higher power” (Kagel, 1970: VIII).

Page 131: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

131

Transformation through editing

In other cases, the rendition of Beethoven’s music as “contemporary” music happens

through the editing of conventional performances:

• Most of the times when different works of Beethoven are heard simultaneously,

it is not a case of simultaneous recording, like the ones I describe above, but a

case of montage, in the sense that they have been put together through editing.

This can be seen clearly in Kagel’s editing plan, where there are up to three

sound tracks superimposed over each other. The effect of that, apart from giving

him the possibility to have, for instance, more than one string quartet playing at

each given moment of the recording, is that there is a sense of space in the

result: through different settings of volume, reverb etc. in each sound track, the

listener gets the impression that the music is coming from very far or very near,

as well as from different directions. In this way Kagel avoided a static result in

the recording.

• Another technique Kagel uses in order to give Beethoven’s music a more radical

dimension is altering the sound of the recordings at the editing table. For

example, by constantly interrupting the sound, by alternating the left and right

channels very fast, or by applying so much echo that the music sounds as if

played in a cave, he surely confronts the listener with versions of Beethoven’s

music that even Beethoven himself could probably not imagine. And still, the

music heard is clearly music by Beethoven, no matter how avant-garde it

sounds.

Page 132: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

132

5. Other realisations of Ludwig van

A. Realisations by Kagel

In the Mauricio Kagel Archive in the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel, there are a number

of programmes of concerts of Ludwig van, as well as some of the reviews they received.

It seems that the first performance of the work was given on 20 March 1970 in Madrid

by the Kölner Ensemble für neue Musik, under Kagel himself, but unfortunately there is

no other information on that concert in the archive. For what seems to have been the

first performance in Germany, in the Städliche Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf on 3 January of

the following year, on the contrary, there is much more information. It was given by an

ensemble with the ironically pompous name “Gesamtdeutsches Kammerorchester”

(Pan-German Chamber Orchestra), which was the same ensemble which recorded the

music for the film version of Ludwig van and which, needless to say, was created only

for the purposes of Ludwig van and never played anything else. The instrumentation

was that of a classical chamber orchestra without double bass, and with the addition of a

guitar and a piano, played by Kagel himself.

There are three reviews of that concert at the Sacher Foundation, none of which

is very enthusiastic about Kagel’s undertaking. Emil Fischer’s “Collage of snippets”, in

the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, informs us that the performance consisted both of

improvisations and of “planned successions of alienations of Beethoven’s music”, both

of long quotations and of small extracts. Fischer believes that this music did not really

work outside the context of the film: “What proved effective as film music, as

background to the image, rarely obtained a valid form without reference [to the image]”.

He claims that the performance sounded like an orchestral rehearsal and that “we can

almost be certain that after such experiments anyone would prefer to go back to the

‘original version’” (Fischer, 1971). Heinrich von Lüttwitz is even less sympathetic to

Ludwig van: as the title of his review in the Rheinische Post reveals, he considered the

concert as “Just cacophony based on crazy ideas”. He dismisses Kagel’s belief that “we

would have to modify Beethoven many times and thoroughly before our ears would

actively readjust to him again”, merely by claiming that this would be a waste of time

(Lüttwitz, 1971). Finally, the editor of the Neue Rhein Zeitung – the author of the article

is signed as “Rd.”, which means the editor (Redaktor) of the newspaper, presumably

Page 133: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

133

Jens Feddersen at that time – thought that the concert was more about Kagel than about

Beethoven, as the title of his review suggests (“More Kagel than Beethoven”).

However, he found the transcriptions of some compositions such as the Diabelli

Variations or the Piano Sonata, op.111, for this ensemble quite witty, although old-

fashioned (Neue Rhein Zeitung, 1971).

Kagel also presented Ludwig van in Bochum in July 1974, with a student

ensemble, while the music room of the film was being exposed. It is possible that Kagel

instructed the students to read the music from the exhibition, in order to reproduce the

initial idea of Ludwig van. Other realisations include concerts in Torino in 1975, and in

München and Paris in 1977, but there is no other information in the Archive apart from

the programmes. Finally, Kagel directed several concerts of Ludwig van along with his

1898 during the concert season 1978-1979; with the London Sinfonietta in Manchester,

Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool, as well as at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London;

and with the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, Gennevilliers and Amsterdam.

There are no reviews available for the concerts in France and the Netherlands,

but the English reviewers were much less critical of Ludwig van than the German ones.

David Roberts found both the composition and its performance satisfactory:

Ludwig van, an irreverent but not iconoclastic collage of Beethoven’s music is a work of elusive identity. The published score, the recording and the film are all different: how the performance related to them was difficult to follow, but the result was enjoyable and lighthearted, the Sinfonietta entering into the spirit of the occasion (Roberts, 1979: 60).

Keith Potter, on the other hand, seems not to have believed that the Sinfonietta entered

“into the spirit of the occasion”: in his article “Lutoslawski, Kagel: contrasted attitudes”

in Classical Music Magazine, he gathers that “some of the orchestra gave Kagel a rough

time in rehearsal” (he does not specify his sources, but admits that it is not Kagel

himself who told him), claims that Ludwig van “is open to much less sober

performances than the one given in the QEH” and ironically comments that the work

poses a threat to the musicians’ way of life (Potter, 1978: 13). Potter obviously believed

that the Sinfonietta players were too serious for a work like Ludwig van, and possibly

Page 134: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

134

that they were not prepared to step outside their traditional role as the work seems to

require.

Indeed, there seems to have been some discontent with Ludwig van within the

ensemble. The violinist Joan Atherton, who took part in the 1978 Sinfonietta tour,

reported an incident that suggests as much:

I remember vividly Harold Lester (the pianist) storming out of the first rehearsal. He was very offended by the piece and upset because it was a desecration of his favourite piece of music. However, he was at the next rehearsal having decided to take a professional attitude towards it and put aside his feelings (Atherton, personal e-mail correspondence).

It seems hardly surprising that Potter found the Sinfonietta players too “sober” for

Ludwig van: since at least one member of the ensemble agreed to perform it only out of

professionalism, there must have been too much tension between the musicians and

Kagel for the collaboration to be fruitful. Unfortunately, Atherton claims that she

remembers very little about the piece, and could not answer my questions about the

structure of the performance and the way Kagel directed it. What she certainly

remembers is that the materials from which the musicians performed on these occasions

were not a collage of Beethoven’s notes. Which brings us to the conclusion that Kagel

did not use his own score of Ludwig van at all in the 1978-1979 tour.

Page 135: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

135

B. Realisations by others

According to my findings at the Sacher Foundation, performances of Ludwig van have

also been given by Gerardo Gandini in Buenos Aires (1977), by Karl Heinz Zarius in

Düsseldorf (1977), by Martin Derungs in Zürich (1978), by Helmut Imig in Essen

(1985), by musicians of the Royal Academy of Music in London (2001) and by Pierre-

André Valade in Milano (2007). Furthermore, the French Ensemble Musique Vivante

includes Ludwig van in its repertory list, but I do not know of any performance of it that

they have given. There is a review of the 1978 performance in Zürich, in which Martin

Derungs apparently devised his own version of the work. The performance was

conducted by Armin Brunner, while Mauricio Kagel himself played the piano part. The

review in the Neue Züriche Zeitung reads:

The new version of Ludwig van, produced by Martin Derungs, received, so to speak, its premiere; this version draws its special quality from the fact that the Beethoven citations are almost always so short that they cannot be identified, and thus the music is held in charming suspense (Author unknown, Neue Züriche Zeitung, 1978).

What Derungs seems to have done differently from Kagel is that he only used short and

unrecognisable fragments of Beethoven’s works: this means that, unlike Kagel, he did

not want to present an alienated version of familiar extracts, but rather to rearrange the

smallest extracts of Beethoven’s music into something different.

Another very interesting document to be found at the Sacher Foundation is a

letter Kagel wrote to Walter E. Rosenberg at the Goethe Institute in Buenos Aires,

including some advice intended for Gandini, presumably the conductor of a scheduled

performance of Ludwig van, on how to interpret it. Kagel actually describes briefly what

he did in his own performances, without trying to impose his way on Gandini:

I usually conduct Ludwig van in such a way that, apart from the chosen succession of [pages of] the score, all participants receive photocopies of various piano sonatas (sometimes also violin and cello sonatas) by Beethoven. Of course the same pages for all players. Thus the performance becomes strangely concrete […] and at the same time unreal. Gandini could maybe try something similar with his musicians. (Kagel, letter to Rosenberg, accessed at the Paul Sacher Foundation)

Page 136: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

136

Although he does not give us much information about how he used to conduct Ludwig

van, we can understand that, contrary to what he did in his recording, in the concerts he

did not plan every single detail. He did use the score of Ludwig van, which was not used

in the recording at all, and in order to obtain some consistency when other Beethoven

works were played, he had all musicians randomly performing fragments of the same

sonatas, even the same pages.

Page 137: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

137

C. Alexandre Tharaud’s recording

There is one more commercial recording of Ludwig van apart from the one Kagel did: it

is part of a CD of Kagel’s piano music, recorded by the French pianist Alexandre

Tharaud in 2003. The performance is about 23 minutes long and it features piano, in a

somehow dominant role, flute, horn, clarinet, cello, a baritone and a choir. It is not in

the purposes of this thesis to offer a complete analysis of Tharaud’s recording of

Ludwig van; what I would like to do here is to point out some of its characteristics and

the techniques it uses that I find worth mentioning.

• The most interesting aspect of this recording is also the main way in which it is

different from Kagel’s: Tharaud uses Kagel’s score quite a lot throughout his

realisation of Ludwig van, and it seems that he does not do so in a random way,

but, on the contrary, in a very planned fashion. In fact the only other

compositions of Beethoven that I could recognise in the recording are the Piano

Sonatas, op.2 no.1 and op.109, the first song from the cycle An die ferne

Geliebte, op.98, and the baritone solo from the Ninth Symphony.

• An important quality of this realisation is the fact that it is very economic, both

in terms of instrumentation – there are very few points in the recording where

more than two instruments are heard, and arguably none where all the

instruments are playing at the same time – and in terms of the material used –

for example, in the fourth section, there is only the piano, playing motives only

from the second page of the score along with some fragments of Piano Sonata,

op.109, for over two minutes.

• In the third section, which, compared to the others, has a thick texture, with the

three winds and the piano playing almost incessantly, Tharaud uses a very

effective method of keeping the result from becoming chaotic: he introduces a

fast and steady ternary metre. Thus, although each instrument is playing

fragments of different works, the rhythm of the section is consistent.

• In the first section we hear Tharaud playing Beethoven’s First Piano Sonata,

while a woman is singing the notes in the manner of solfège. To whoever comes

from a country where the solfège syllables (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti) are used as

names of the notes – and France belongs to this category – this combination

Page 138: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

138

sounds like a piano lesson, where the teacher would lead the student by singing

the melody while the latter would play the sonata. Thus, in almost a Kagelian

way, Tharaud is bringing musical life into musical practice.

• The choir never sings as a choir during the recording. For the most part of their

role, the choristers whisper something that sounds like the word “Beethoven” in

an unsynchronised way. And in the eighth section, each of them sings a different

melody, probably from the score. In order to prevent this section from becoming

chaotic, Tharaud has them singing as from far away, presumably by

manipulating the balance of the different sound tracks.

• Finally, an interesting technique of alienation of Beethoven that Tharaud uses is

to read fragments from Kagel’s score assuming a different key signature (since

the original key signature is usually not given in the score), even in places where

it is obvious where the motives come from. For example, one of the recurring

motives of the whole recording is a fragment of the Marcia Funebre from the

Piano Sonata, op.26, slightly changed due to this reading: the result sounds

absurdly familiar and at the same time not Beethovenian, due to the strange

harmony. Another example is the last section of Tharaud’s Ludwig van, where

he plays motives from p.17 of Kagel’s score in a slow and atmospheric manner,

assuming there is no key signature, where in fact there should be, and repeating

the same motives over and over again, varying only the rhythm from time to

time: the result is a modal and minimalist piano miniature that really sounds

“like the music of today”, as Kagel would say.

Tharaud’s realisation of Ludwig van is a fascinating rendition of the work, not

only because it is very cleverly planned and beautifully made – at least to my ears – but

also because it offers an entirely different perspective on the composition itself:

Tharaud’s recording seems to have nothing in common with Kagel’s recording, apart

from the fact that both are made out of quotations from Beethoven’s music. Tharaud can

be argued to be more faithful to Kagel’s text than Kagel himself, since he bases his

recording mainly on the score of Ludwig van, which Kagel does not use at all in his

recording. On the other hand, what the two recordings do have in common is that they

both seem to be thoroughly planned rather than based on chance. Overall, Tharaud

presents us with totally different ways of processing the same material, and produces a

Page 139: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

139

very different result out of the same composition. In this way he demonstrates what is

most fascinating about Ludwig van: that it can be realised in innumerable ways, without

losing its originality, since each performer contributes their own ideas to the final result.

Page 140: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

140

6. Discussion of performance problems

As shown in this chapter, both through the presentation of the score and through the

discussion of its different realisations, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven is a

unique work in terms of the challenges it poses to performers. It is arguably Kagel’s

most indeterminate composition, in which the performers are given almost absolute

freedom, and yet the material on which they have to exercise this freedom is the music

of Beethoven, possibly the most respected composer of all times. As I argued in section

III.3.C, Kagel demonstrated the performers’ fear of Beethoven’s music, as well as the

stylised way in which it is usually performed, in the film version of Ludwig van; in the

score, he asks performers to abolish the stylisation that derives from this fear and treat

this music in a completely different way: he invites them to use their creativity and feel

free with it. In this section I will discuss my view on how performers should respond to

this challenge, on what they should do with a work like Ludwig van.

The first way of treating the score of Ludwig van that any classically trained

musician would think of when confronted with it would probably be the obvious: to

take Kagel’s score, distribute the pages to the members of the ensemble, read them

Kagel’s instructions and ask them to play, while at the same time listening to the others

and trying to fit in without making the texture too dense. They would probably add

some more Beethoven works in order to add some variety to it, since Kagel allows that

in his instructions. But the main source for the performance would be the actual score,

the random collage of Beethoven’s quotations. After all, only one of the instructions

talks about using additional material from Beethoven’s music, whereas all the others

specify how the actual score of Ludwig van should be used.

However, my view is that there is no point in such a performance. This random

collage of quotations is exactly what happens during the music room sequence of the

film. And it does function well in that sequence, but firstly because it is only a few

minutes long and secondly because the viewer has the notes in front of him/her while

hearing the music, so he/she can follow it. Since the camera impersonates Beethoven,

this sequence depicts him reading through pages of his music and at the same time

hearing the music in his head; the random succession and overlapping of quotations

have a function in the film, and therefore there is a point in them in that context. In the

Page 141: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

141

context of the concert hall, such a performance would sound chaotic and there would be

no sense of form, since the performers would not have any control over chance. My

opinion is that it would not manage to keep the audience’s attention for more than a few

minutes, since the texture would remain more or less the same throughout. Kagel

himself would probably not approve of such a performance: according to Heile, quoted

above, he was probably too much of an aesthete to actually give up authoritarian control

(Heile, 2006: 34).

Moreover, as I showed in section IV.3.A, Ludwig van does not fall in the

category of indeterminate works which aim for the elimination of subjectivity, in which

case it would be appropriate to perform it in such a way that would leave as many

aspects as possible to chance: in this case, we would have to follow the performance

practices of musicians who collaborated with the American experimentalists, such as

David Tudor. But in my opinion Ludwig van follows what Griffiths would call the

“European” tendency in indeterminate music, which does not aim for a chance-

generated result, but trusts the subjectivity and creativity of the performer. That is made

more obvious, as I showed in section IV.4, from the fact that even Kagel himself did not

use the score at all when he made his own recording of Ludwig van: on the contrary, he

planned it in every detail and avoided leaving anything to chance. Interestingly enough,

along with asking performers to play Beethoven in their own way, without necessarily

following the composer’s instructions, Kagel encourages them to ignore his own

instructions by ignoring them himself.

Therefore, it seems as if Ludwig van is a game of shifting authority and control

in a rather complex manner, eventually aiming at liberating the performer’s creative

authority as much as possible. Thus, Kagel seems to be striving to pose himself as an

“example” of a composer who resists the “temptation” of conventional creative

authority through a demonstration of his lack of interest in being idolized or stylised,

but, rather, in sharing his creativity with the performer. This links the indeterminate

character of the composition Ludwig van to the anti-authoritarial claims of the film:

Kagel refuses to take certain decisions in composing it, not because he opposes

subjectivity in general, but as an anti-authoritarian effort to overturn the composer-

performer hierarchy and giving the latter what he is not “supposed” to have, the

freedom to re-compose the work, rather than to merely interpret it.

Page 142: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

142

It seems as if the score is actually a piece of visual art in its own right, and that it

does not have anything to do with the composition, Ludwig van. The only thing the

score offers performers is the concept. Through it, Kagel gives the performers the

licence to create something of their own, to act as composers without having to pretend

they are composers, without officially betraying their traditional role. At the end of the

foreword to the score – in which the instructions are to be found – Kagel highlights the

fact that the performers should feel free to be creative and not take the instructions too

seriously: “I give all this as introduction and invitation: musicians can go from here”

(Kagel, 1970: VI). He seems to be saying that his instructions on the use of the score are

not so important: what counts is the invitation to other musicians to undertake the task

themselves. According to Kagel, the concept of faithfulness to the work (Werktreue) has

led to performances which are too moderate and well-behaved (Salonfähig, which

actually means acceptable in the salon, i.e. in high society); on the contrary, he believes

that in order to distill the essence of the masters, musicians have to give very subjective

performances and to ignore the “commercial-ethical-musical-social pressures” which

require them to play their music in a specific conventional way (Kagel, 1970: V-VI).

In Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven, performers do not actually have to do

anything. This composition, or, more precisely, this concept, is about what the

performer may do. It allows performers to play Beethoven’s music outside the rules set

by the composer and by the commercial-ethical-musical-social pressures mentioned

above. Thus, the traditional composer-performer hierarchy, according to which the

performer has to obey the instructions of the composer and the former’s only role is to

convey the message of the latter to the audience without altering it in any way, is

overthrown. In Ludwig van, the performer is encouraged to be creative and

unconventional. This is how Beethoven’s music can become alive again and sound like

music of the present. With Ludwig van, Kagel tries to resist the musealisation of

Beethoven: he asks us not to see his works as masterpieces of the past which we must

preserve, but to treat them as art that can still be relevant to us.

If there is anything that I consider advisable to performers who intend to

undertake the challenge of Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven, it is to get acquainted

with the work of Mauricio Kagel and, most importantly, the film version of Ludwig van.

Page 143: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

143

I believe that it is crucial to become familiar with Kagel’s sense of irony, his

instrumental theatre works, and his heretical views on the musical world and the way it

functions. It is useful to know that Kagel was part of the European avant-garde of the

1960s, and that Ludwig van is his only composition that leaves so much freedom to the

performers. It is also important to acknowledge his sincere respect and love for

composers like Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, and the others for whom he wrote works that

include elements of parody, and to realise that it is not out of tactless mockery that he

composed such works. As for the film, it would serve as a starting point for reflection

on the issues that concerned Kagel; it would help potential performers deconstruct

Beethoven’s myth and try to disconnect the myth from the actual music; it would make

them listen to Beethoven’s music as if they knew nothing about him, and try to get to

the “real” Beethoven, however impossible that might sound.

However, although it is important for a performer to be familiar with Kagel’s

work before they create their own version of Ludwig van, it is even more crucial to

realise that this work is not about Beethoven as seen by Kagel; it is about Beethoven

through the eyes of the performer, each performer who dares to use their individual

creativity with Beethoven’s music as the initial material. For this reason, Ludwig van

should not be played in a “historically informed” way: it is a concept rather than a

finished work and for this reason it changes according to the people who perform it and

the time in which it is performed. In much the same way as he proposed that

Beethoven’s music should be played as music of today – which happened to be the early

1970s for him but it could have been any other time –, Kagel seems to be proposing that

we should play Ludwig van as if it was composed today. Playing Ludwig van as a period

piece would contradict its actual concept: Ludwig van was conceived as a reaction to the

idea of period performance, and therefore it would make no sense to apply the

principles of period performance to it. On the contrary, the concept of Ludwig van

should be interpreted as a concept of today, and it actually is still very relevant today:

Beethoven’s music is even more present in our lives owing to the new technologies, the

easy access to millions of scores and recordings through the internet, and we hear it

even involuntarily, in television advertisements or even mobile phone ringtones; the

myth around his personality is also alive and well, with several films on his life having

been produced in the last few decades; finally, with the Arab spring and all the

Page 144: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

144

demonstrations by students and workers in the last few years in Europe and the USA, it

seems that our time has a lot in common with the time when Ludwig van was conceived.

For all these reasons, it is important to realise that Ludwig van is not a work that

we should interpret with what Kagel called “Werktreue”, trying to be as faithful as we

can to its composer and its time. It is against the work’s concept to try to play Ludwig

van as Kagel would have done it: firstly, because this has already been done and there is

no point in doing it again; secondly, because we cannot have an idea of how Kagel

would do it, were he to do it now, under today’s circumstances and with today’s

technology; and thirdly, because Kagel is absent from Ludwig van: he is not the author.

Ludwig van is a composition whose authorship belongs to Beethoven and to the

performer who undertakes it; it is a work that is recomposed each time it is performed.

Page 145: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

145

Chapter V

Realising Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven

In this section I will present and discuss my own attempts at realising Ludwig van:

Hommage von Beethoven in the course of my research. The first section will be about

my first realisation of the score in May 2009, as part of my upgrade assessment. I will

describe the preparation procedure and provide a detailed account of the structure I

decided to give to my realisation, based on Beethoven’s Elf Neue Bagatellen. After that

I will review the performance of this realisation and draw some conclusions based on its

outcome. In the second section I will talk about my second and final realisation of

Ludwig van, which took place in June 2011, as part of my final recital. Once again, I

will describe the structure, giving some examples of the scores I made for its

performance, and then I will evaluate the performance, leaving my final conclusions for

the next chapter.

Page 146: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

146

1. May 2009 realisation

A. Preparation

As I argued in the previous chapter, the score for Ludwig van is unique from many

aspects:

• The instrumentation is absolutely free, and, according to Kagel’s instruction,

“old, exotic and electric instruments as well as any other sound sources of a

purely experimental nature may be used” (Kagel, 1970: VIII).

• The duration of performance is ad libitum.

• Pages can be played in random order, repeated or omitted at the performers’

discretion, and any of each page’s four edges may be considered the bottom

edge.

• Short fragments of works by Beethoven that are not in the score can be used,

either in the original instrumentation or not.

• It could be argued that all the instructions Kagel writes in the score could be

replaced by the following rule: the performers can do anything they want, as

long as every single note they play is by Beethoven. In this way, Ludwig van

poses a great challenge to the musicians who want to perform it. Classically

trained musicians consider their work as reading and interpreting a musical text

that someone else has composed. This is even more the case for performers of

serialist or avant-garde scores, which tend to minimise the degree of freedom

left to the performer: rhythmic and dynamic markings are so precise that they do

not allow for much variety of interpretation, and faithfulness to the text is

considered a major advantage for a performer of our time. Therefore, giving

such performers the freedom – and, to some extent, the instruction – to be

creative and to rearrange Beethoven’s music in any way they want, is

completely outside their training.

My initial idea about the first version of Ludwig van was to bring together

musicians whom I consider creative and keen to explore a different way of music

making, one that is actually beyond the traditional sense of “performing” music.

Therefore I decided to choose musicians with whom I had already worked in the past,

Page 147: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

147

and whom I found to be excellent team workers. It was important for me that the

musicians would not behave like traditional performers, waiting to be given instructions

in order to play; I needed people who would have ideas and take initiatives. And of

course I needed people who would not regard Ludwig van as only my project, but who

would be personally interested in it. Since Ludwig van is Kagel’s composition which,

according to him, “brings about the abolition of intellectual authorship” (Kagel, 1970:

VIII), and therefore there is no composer-author of it, it is the performers who

determine its aesthetic result much more than in any other composition. Based on these

thoughts, I chose a team of nine performers, including myself. The ensemble featured a

singer, two violins, two cellos, a clarinet, a melodica, and two pianos.

In the first rehearsals I decided to try performing the score without giving the

musicians any other instruction than the ones Kagel gives, in order to see how this

would function. Moreover, we only used Kagel’s score, without any other music by

Beethoven, and we did not use any programme or structure for that. After doing this a

number of times, and always discussing the results with the ensemble, we reached the

conclusion that this is not effective at a performance level. The juxtaposition of motives

from different works by Beethoven did sound fascinating, and the timbres in the

ensemble did make a powerful combination, but there was no sense of development:

although we managed to interact very well with each other and to create different

atmospheres and moods, each of the performances was overall quite static. I had the

impression that such a performance could be very effective, but only for a short time.

In order to deal with this problem, I started to organise the sessions in different

ways, so that the performance would acquire a structure: I asked the performers to

change specific variants, such as the tempo, the articulation, the pitch, the dynamics, the

density of texture, according to specific plans. Thus, the performance would not be

static and it would have a sense of direction and development. We experimented with

many different ways of structuring the performance, and this improved the result

drastically: we came up with many possibilities for different and radical moods and

structures, whereas before that the result was homogenous and somewhat plain. With

these experiments, I reached the conclusion that I had to control the aesthetic result to a

greater extent, and that I myself had to decide the structure I wanted the performance to

have. I also decided not to base my realisation only on Kagel’s score, but mainly on

Page 148: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

148

quotations from Beethoven’s music that were not in it. The main reason for this decision

was that I thought that a structured and carefully considered juxtaposition of motives

from Beethoven’s music would be much more effective than a random succession of

quotations. And I did not have any reason to believe that this would be against Kagel’s

intentions, as I knew that in his recording of Ludwig van he did not make use of the

score either, but he rather planned everything in detail.

Therefore, my decision not to use Kagel’s instructions for the realisation of

Ludwig van was, ironically, closer to Kagel’s spirit and his actual vision of the work.

And, as Kagel claimed to have based the structure of his version on the structure of a

Beethoven work – the Diabelli Variations, op.120 – I decided to do the same, and the

work I chose for this is his previous opus number, the Elf Neue Bagatellen, op.119. The

reason I chose this work, apart from my personal attachment to it, was that it consists of

eleven short pieces of very diverse character, and that it exhibits many of the features of

Beethoven’s style, from the light and lively character of his early works, to the sublime

qualities of his later period. I thought that taking such a work as a basis would help me

embrace many different aspects of Beethoven’s music in my project.

I could not claim that the way I worked on the structure was analytical or

systematic. I rather decided to employ the Bagatelles in a more creative way: in some

cases what I kept from them was only their character, in other only a harmonic

progression, a technical aspect, or even just a motive. I used the Bagatelles mostly as a

source of inspiration, in order to create a sense of unity in the whole performance

instead of making it sound like a potpourri based on Beethoven’s music. The way in

which each of the eleven sections of my realisation was derived from each of

Beethoven’s Bagatelles, the material used for each of them and the basic ideas behind

them will be described below. I will also include some examples of the scores I made

for some of them, in order to illustrate the different degrees of control I applied to the

different sections.

Page 149: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

149

B. Structure

i.

For the first section, my idea was to start from Kagel’s score and the random succession

of quotations it involved. Thus, the only thing that I kept from the first Bagatelle was

the opening motive, which I used as an opening motive for Ludwig van. For the rest of

the first section, all the musicians, including me, were playing from random pages of

Kagel’s score. I asked the musicians to sit among the audience, so that the performance

would start as a solo piano recital that would be interrupted by musical motives from

throughout the room, which would be sparse in the beginning and would build up into

chaos. For this building-up, I asked the musicians to stick to one motive near the end of

the section, so that the result would be a minimal sound that would gradually augment.

This chaos was interrupted by a very ironic scene, in which an outraged member of the

audience – the singer of the ensemble, who had not sung anything up to that time –

stood up and sang the baritone solo which introduces the Ode to Joy in Beethoven’s

Ninth Symphony: “Oh friends, not these tones! Rather, let us sing more pleasantly and

joyfully!” His interruption is further interrupted when his phone starts ringing, and the

ringtone is nothing but the opening of Für Elise, to which he rushes out of the room.

ii.

The “more pleasant and joyful tones” appear, indeed, in the second section, which I

scored for four hands on one piano with the help of my piano duo partner Andriana

Minou. The Bagatelle on which it is based is a very simple and joyous piece in the

bright key of C major, in which a constant and rather plain chord progression in the

middle register accompanies a number of short motives in a higher or lower register.

From it, I only kept the accompanying line, and I replaced all the insignificant motives

of the other lines with very well-known motives from Beethoven’s masterpieces, mainly

the most important piano sonatas and the Ninth Symphony. I arranged these in such a

way that they still sounded consonant with the accompanying line, and therefore the

harmonic language of this section was actually very close to Beethoven’s own. The

form of this section, on the contrary, was far from being Beethovenian, with its vast

thematic material in a very short time. The result was a piece that sounded a lot like

Beethoven, but whose structure could not have been further from Beethoven’s style,

with so many unconnected motives scattered in only two pages of music.

Page 150: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

150

In example 3 you can see the second page of the score I generated for this

section: the printed notes are from Beethoven’s Bagatelle, the phrases in brackets are

the ones that we omitted and the handwritten notes are the ones we added to the

Bagatelle. All the quotations are used in such a way that they sound right in terms of

harmony. The following quotations can be seen in Example 3, in the order they appear:

the opening of the Piano Sonata, op.10 no.2, the opening of the Piano Sonata, op.2 no.3,

the opening of the Scherzo from the Ninth Symphony, the main theme of the Coriolan

Overture, the opening of the Marcia funebre from the Piano Sonata, op.26, the theme of

the Rondo of the Piano Sonata, op.13, a theme from the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony,

the Theme of the Scherzo from the Ninth Symphony, and, finally, the Ode to Joy. It is

obvious from this score that I left nothing to chance in this section: there is as much

indeterminacy in this score as in any traditionally notated score; in other words, only the

tempo and the interpretation are left to the performers, whereas the notes and the rhythm

are determined by me.

Page 151: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

151

Example 3. May 2009 realisation, section ii, p.2

Page 152: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

152

iii.

From the third Bagatelle I decided to use two of its aspects: the first one is the arpeggio

as a primary musical feature instead of an accompaniment, as this Bagatelle is one of

many Beethoven works whose themes are based on an arpeggio; the second is the

harmonic succession dominant-tonic, since the entire piece is built on this succession.

Therefore I made a collage of arpeggios from different piano pieces which were

forming the circle of fifths (C, F, B flat, E flat etc.). Thus, each arpeggio was at the

same time a tonic chord and a dominant for the next arpeggio. And all the arpeggios

used were from very characteristic points of Beethoven’s music: their role in the end

result is not merely functional, for instance to signify the harmony or to link two

episodes together; on the contrary, they were taken from what I consider some of the

most beautiful moments of Beethoven’s music. As I always found it striking how

Beethoven made sublime music out of basic musical material, I decided to highlight it

by bringing some of these moments together in this section.

iv.

The circle of fifths of the third section finishes with the opening F-major arpeggio of

Beethoven’s Sonata for violin and piano, op.24 (Frühlingssonate), and therefore the

arpeggio becomes again what it traditionally is, an accompaniment figure. From the

fourth Bagatelle, the only thing I decided to keep was the light-hearted and carefree

character, as well as the simplicity of its melody. I chose the Frühlingssonate because it

is a very characteristic example of these elements in Beethoven’s work. I asked one of

the violinists to play the theme in a very exaggeratedly personal way, in order to satirise

the fact that many performers cannot conceive the simplicity of such parts of

Beethoven’s music and tend to over-romanticise them, in an effort to show that they

have captured the essence of the music. The second half of this section was satirising

another kind of abuse of Beethoven’s music: I asked all the musicians apart from the

pianists and the singer to play the same melody unisono and loud, alluding to the

amateurish sound of some school orchestras, where although none of the players is

familiar with the music they play, they all tend to be very enthusiastic about it.

v.

In contrast to the fourth Bagatelle, the fifth one is a very serious Risoluto in the dramatic

key of C minor. This key, in which so many of Beethoven’s “passionate” works are

Page 153: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

153

written, is often considered to be the tonality in which he expressed his heroic and tragic

nature. In order to highlight the recurrence of this tonality in most of Beethoven’s tragic

works, I wrote a collage in which motives from a number of these works – the Fifth

Symphony, the Piano Sonatas, op.10 no.1, op.13 (Pathétique) and op.111, the Third

Piano Concerto – were sounding simultaneously. I organised this in three pieces: in the

first one, the opening motives of all pieces were heard all together, and the harmony

implied was obviously the tonic chord; in the second, the same motives were sounding,

this time implying the dominant chord, something that, interestingly enough, occurs in

all the pieces; in the third one I brought together all the cadences of the pieces I

mentioned. Thus I created a compressed version of a number of heroic works, which,

given the circumstances, could not but sound comical, or indeed ridiculous, since it

comprised so many outbreaks of the composer’s heroic nature in some thirty seconds of

music, isolated and decontextualised.

Example 4 shows the first page of the score I made for section v. From top to bottom,

the clarinet is playing the opening of the Piano Sonata, op.10 no.1, the pianos are

playing the openings of the Piano Sonatas, op.13 and op.111, and the cellos are playing

the first motives of the Fifth Symphony and the Third Piano Concerto. As in the

previous example, all the notes are predetermined, but here the rhythm is not strict: each

instrument plays its motive in their own time, depending on the work from which the

motive is taken.

Page 154: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

154

Example 4. May 2009 realisation, section v, p.1

Page 155: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

155

vi.

The aspect of the sixth Bagatelle on which I decided to elaborate was its cheerful and

playful character. What I wanted to draw attention to here was an aspect of the

Beethovenian myth. Beethoven is so widely regarded as a tragic figure that even his

light-hearted compositions are very often seen as containing an underlying element of

tragedy. In other words, we can never view Beethoven’s works for what they really are:

we always interpret them taking into account the image we have created for their

composer. I decided to illustrate this by creating a chaotic soundscape of different

cheerful tunes, under which a tragic image – the Allegretto from the Seventh Symphony

– would lurk. I structured this section in such a way that the Allegretto, played by the

second pianist who was off stage, would be hardly heard in the beginning, like an

underlying threat, and it would be left alone and revealed towards the end.

For this section, as I wanted it to sound chaotic, I did not want to produce a

conventional score. On the other hand, although I did not want to have control over

what and when the musicians would play, I wanted to control the character of the

motives they were going to play. Therefore I decided not to use Kagel’s score, but to

make collages of works that were in the character I had in mind for each of the

instruments. I asked the musicians to play any part of any motive in the collage I gave

them, and in any order they liked. Example 5 shows the compilation of tunes I made for

the clarinet in this section, all chosen from piano sonatas and chamber works that

exhibit the playful character I intended for this section.

Page 156: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

156

Example 5. May 2009 realisation, section vi, clarinet part

Page 157: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

157

vii.

The next section was also based on an aspect of the Beethoven myth. The fact that the

seventh Bagatelle is virtually full of trills brought to my mind one theory about his late

piano works, which claims that by incorporating so many trills in them, he was trying to

portray the constant buzzing he was hearing at the late stages of his deafness. I recall

having being told this as a child, but I have not managed to find it in any of Beethoven’s

biographies or the analyses of his late works. All the same, this did not discourage me

from alluding to it in my realisation of Ludwig van, since it seems to be another popular

myth about Beethoven and how his suffering was portrayed in his music, and therefore

is relevant to a work about Beethoven’s reception. For this section I orchestrated the

Adagio Cantabile from the Piano Sonata, op.13 (Pathétique) for clarinet and strings and

had the pianists interrupt the flow of this beautiful melody with disturbing simultaneous

trills.

viii.

The eighth Bagatelle’s texture is polyphonic with many suspended notes. In each beat

of the bar, only one or two voices change their note, and therefore the piece moves

gradually and subtly from one harmony to another. I decided to imitate this technique,

but I replaced classical harmonic language with random pitches. I asked the performers

to use Kagel’s score – each of them a separate page – and play very long pianissimo

notes from it, which they had to hold for several seconds before they moved to the next

note. The result did not allude to Beethoven’s music in any way, although all the notes

were taken from his works. On the contrary, it sounded more like a slowly changing

cluster, thus illustrating Kagel’s claim that Ludwig van was Beethoven’s contribution to

contemporary music (Kagel, 1970: VIII). Kagel’s score leaves such freedom to the

performer that there can be realisations of it which could sound like original works, in

almost any musical style, depending on how short fragments of Beethoven’s

compositions are used.

ix.

The ninth Bagatelle, in A minor, could be argued to foresee the school of Romantic

piano music. In my opinion it is actually reminiscent of Chopin’s waltzes. This

Romantic character was all I kept for the ninth section of Ludwig van. I decided to

dedicate this section to a typically Romantic subject, unfortunate love. For this, I wrote

Page 158: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

158

out a Lied, in which the accompaniment was taken from Beethoven’s Wonne der

Wehmut (The joy of melancholy), op.83 no.1, whereas the singer’s part was a collage of

various motives from Beethoven’s songs that bear the words Liebe (love) and – in the

second part – Tränen (tears). Thus this section alluded to Untitled (love) by Jim Hodges,

a visual collage that comprises fragments of vocal scores with the word love. The result

was a caricature, from the aspect of “composition” as well as of performance: the

“composition” itself parodied the obsession with the subject of love found in 19th-

century poetry and Lieder, whereas the performance was so exaggeratedly emotional

that it parodied the attitude some singers have of taking themselves too seriously and of

over-emotionalising texts that are already intense and sentimental.

x.

The tenth Bagatelle is probably Beethoven’s shortest piece of music, lasting only about

fifteen seconds, and with a staccato and elusive character. It was precisely this character

that I wanted to capture for the tenth section of Ludwig van. I created an equally short

section in which the strings would play fast pizzicato notes, which would act as the

disintegration of the pseudo-dramatic mood of the previous section.

xi.

It was the character, once again, on which I chose to elaborate in the last Bagatelle. This

piece exhibits the sublime, even religious character of some of Beethoven’s last works,

and ends with a simple and divine chorale. For the last section of Ludwig van, I asked

each performer to find a piece of Beethoven’s music that, for them, had a similar

character, a piece that they personally regarded as sublime. I wanted all the performers

to participate in this section at the same time, but without creating the chaos of the first

section. In a way, I saw the last section as the counter-image of the first: in both of

them, all the performers were playing simultaneously and with a certain degree of

indeterminacy as to what would coincide with what; but whereas the first was chaotic,

the last one had to be peaceful and serene. Thus, I asked the musicians to perform this

as if it was a dialogue: each of us had to listen very attentively and play short fragments

of our own melody only when we each judged it appropriate. In this way, I managed to

achieve the result I intended, without posing too many rules for the performers, which

made the section more improvisatory and natural. As a coda, I chose to keep the chorale

of the last four bars of the Bagatelle, but instead of playing it, we sang it. This

Page 159: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

159

intensified the religious character of this section and ended the performance in a

peaceful and sincere homage to Beethoven.

Page 160: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

160

C. Performance evaluation

The performance of the first realisation of Ludwig van was quite successful, given the

small number of rehearsals I managed to have with the whole ensemble and that it was

the first time that I was experimenting with this material. The ensemble was well

coordinated, the timing was according to my plan, the “chance” sections worked quite

well and the audience was very enthusiastic. Most of the humorous and ironic moments

came across to the audience, and seemed to be appreciated by them. Furthermore, the

musicians seemed to enjoy being experimental with Beethoven’s music, which I believe

was very important to the performance’s success.

There were, of course some things that could have been better, either from the

perspective of performance or from that of “composition”:

• The chorale in the last section was not very well in tune or very synchronised.

As it was much better in the rehearsals, I believe that it was because our voices

were not warmed-up after playing instruments for twenty minutes. Therefore I

think that it was not a particularly good idea to have the ensemble sing a five-

part choral, at least not at the end of the performance.

• It occurred to me that sometimes it was not very clear to the whole audience

whether some of the performances were purposefully exaggerated and over-

sentimental or not. Although ambiguity is one of the main characteristics of

Kagel’s music, I was not content thinking that the audience might have not

realised that some of the performances they heard were kitsch and grotesque

because they were actually planned to be this way.

• Finally, as my main concern was for the “chance” sections not to be chaotic, I

spent most of the rehearsal time on them, feeling quite secure about the written-

out sections. This resulted in some of the latter being slightly under-rehearsed

and the coordination of them not being as accurate as it could have been.

Another issue that occurred to me when I watched the video recording of this

realisation was the staging of the work. I conceived this realisation primarily as a purely

musical work, rather than a work of musical theatre. Therefore, there was not much

“theatrical” action, with the exception of two sections. One of them was the first one, in

Page 161: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

161

which all the instrumentalists apart from me were sitting among the audience and the

singer who interrupted them was supposed to be an audience member. The theatrical

aspect of this section was that his mobile phone started ringing and he rushed out of the

room embarrassed. The other was the fourth section, in which the violinist who was

playing the theme of the Frühlingssonate was reading the music from sheets that were

hanging on the other performers’ backs, as they were advancing towards the stage.

Therefore, the theatrical aspects I used, and especially the latter, were mainly functional,

and they mainly served the music. I used them as a way of justifying the fact that the

musicians were among the audience in the beginning and the fact that they had to come

on stage at some point during the performance.

In my opinion, this did not have a very good effect on the whole performance,

especially since both theatrical episodes happened quite early in the course of it. After

the fourth section and until the end, all the musicians were on stage, performing pure

music, something that made the performance lack in symmetry. Introducing two

theatrical actions near the beginning of the piece probably made the audience expect the

whole realisation to be more theatrical and made the rest of the performance feel quite

static. I believe that the theatrical aspect in a work like Ludwig van could be much more

present, not only because of Kagel’s nature and his association with musical theatre, but

also because it would make it more possible to introduce Kagel’s thoughts on

Beethoven’s reception, as expressed in the film. In other words, incorporating some

theatrical action would make the connection between the film and the musical

composition clearer to the audience.

Of course, the incorporation of more theatrical action in an otherwise musical

performance raises the issue of direction, something which, as a musical performer, I

was not entirely prepared to face. The formalities of conventional musical performance

are quite inflexible, and musicians and audiences alike, in my opinion, tend to ignore its

visual aspect, and therefore they seldom reflect on the staging of a concert. However,

when the performers have to step out of their traditional roles and to act out a task other

than playing music, as in Kagel’s instrumental theatre, the performance stops being

exclusively musical and its visual aspect becomes quite important. As I found out when

watching the video recording of my realisation, the incorporation of theatrical elements

into musical performance, however few they may be, requires much more reflection on

Page 162: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

162

the staging of the performance. A performance of instrumental theatre does not only

need to be rehearsed and conducted: it also needs to be directed, in the theatrical sense

of the word.

Page 163: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

163

D. Conclusions

Overall, I was very content with this realisation of Ludwig van. I managed to find

solutions to the various problems the score poses quite early in the preparation

procedure, and worked out a highly satisfactory version in only five rehearsals. I believe

that the structure I decided to use was in accordance with Kagel’s spirit in many ways.

First of all, it was faithful to his instructions, but at the same time it was a highly

creative project on my part. Secondly, it gave some freedom to all the performers who

took part in it, but it was not as chaotic and undisciplined as a mere reading of Kagel’s

score would have been. Thirdly, it dealt with some of the issues that Kagel deals with in

his film Ludwig van, such as commercialisation of Beethoven’s music (the ringtone in

section i), performers’ abuse of Beethoven (grotesque performances in sections iv and

ix), and the Beethoven cult (his tragic fate and deafness in sections v, vi and vii).

Finally, despite the humour and irony that were obvious in most sections of my

realisation, I strongly believe that there was an overall sense of homage to the great

composer.

Another element of this realisation which I believe was in accordance with

Kagel’s intentions is its postmodern nature. Of course I am not talking about the

postmodern elements of the work itself, which were naturally already there, and which I

have discussed in section IV.2. I am talking about the way in which I employed the

material and combined the different quotations by Beethoven. I believe that the

performance was postmodern, in the sense Charles Jencks gives to the word: he defines

postmodernism as double-coding, meaning that postmodern art (in his case,

architecture) combines modernist techniques with other material in order to

communicate both with a concerned minority, and with the wider public (Jencks,

1996:29). In other words, postmodern art contains both the elitist qualities of modernist

art and the more accessible qualities of popular art.

I believe that everyone in the audience of this realisation could follow the

performance, and that there were different levels of understanding the references. For

example, I did not expect everyone in the room to realise the connections between the

Bagatelles and their distorted version in Ludwig van, and it was not my intention to

make these connections apparent to everyone. Moreover, some members of the

Page 164: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

164

audience might have noticed the juxtaposition of Beethoven’s C minor works in the

fifth section – but surely some did not. On the other hand, anyone could tell that the

connotation of a mobile ringing the tune of Für Elise has to do with the

commercialisation of Beethoven and his incorporation into mainstream popular culture.

And anyone could – and did – find funny and ironic the over-romanticised and

dramatised performances of some of his works.

Finally, it is very important to highlight the fact that I learnt a lot through the

preparation and performance of this realisation. First of all, I found out how my ideas

could be realised with an ensemble, and which of them actually sounded as I imagined

them and intended them to sound, and which did not. Secondly, I had the experience of

confronting a number of performers with different levels of freedom and seeing how

they react to them. Thirdly, I experimented with rehearsal time and drew conclusions on

how long the preparation for a performance like this needs to be. Fourthly, I made an

attempt in staging and directing a musical performance that contains theatrical elements,

a skill on which I elaborated more in my next realisation. Overall, through this first

effort in realising Ludwig van, I gained some experience towards my second and final

realisation of this work, both by experimenting and having new ideas on how it can

work, and by knowing which things should be avoided.

Page 165: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

165

2. June 2011 realisation

A. General aims

My second and final realisation of Ludwig van took place in June 2011 at the Great

Hall, Goldsmiths College, as part of my final PhD recital. As with the earlier realisation,

I still considered it a work that should, to a certain extent, be shaped through the

rehearsals, by all those involved in it. That said, thanks to the experience I had gained

through my first realisation, I was better prepared for what might or might not work,

and therefore I had a clearer view of what I wanted to achieve through it, as well as of

the general structure I intended this realisation to have. Thus, contrary to my first

realisation, for which I started the rehearsal procedure with very little idea of the

outcome, in this one I had taken most decisions before I started rehearsing with the

ensemble. In this section I will present my main aims for the second realisation of

Ludwig van.

First of all, I intended to apply different degrees of control to the final product:

from an absolutely traditional score, where everything is written out, to more

indeterminate approaches, but excluding an absolutely indeterminate reading of Kagel’s

score. I decided against the latter, firstly because I did use it in my first realisation but

was not entirely content with the result, and secondly because Kagel himself did not

employ this approach at all in his realisations, as I argue in sections IV.4.C and IV.5.A.

Thus, I decided to make use of a variety of ways of organising the material in this

collage, described below; the Latin numbers in brackets are the sections in which I used

each of these ways in my realisation, as described in section V.2.B:

• Use of Kagel’s score, but not in a totally random way. One approach would be

actually to compose a collage based on the notes that happen to be on the

pictures in the score, as Alexandre Tharaud did for most of his recording.

Another way would be to “improvise” on specific motives from the score, which

would be chosen beforehand, in order to achieve a more consistent result

(section vii).

Page 166: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

166

• Collages of motives from only one work, as Kagel did with the Ghost Trio in his

recording, where he asked each of the musicians to play his own part, but in his

own time, creating a fascinating juxtaposition of motives while retaining and

even augmenting, as Kagel argues (Kagel, 1970: VIII), the character of the work

(section x).

• Pre-composed collage of specific features of Beethoven’s music, in such a way

as to produce a piece that might not have anything to do with Beethoven’s style

(sections iv, v, ix)

• Performance of an original work by Beethoven, without changing any of the

notes, but played in a very personal way, which could be against the rules of

faithful rendition of the work, and therefore would be unacceptable if presented

in a conventional recital of Beethoven’s music. This is done by Kagel mostly in

the film rather than in the recording of Ludwig van; for instance in chapter 19, in

which a caricature of Elly Ney plays a Waldstein Sonata full of unjustified

accents and tempo changes (sections iii, viii).

• Deliberate use of iconic moments, even clichés, which are commonly associated

with specific ideas concerning Beethoven and his music, such as the opening

motive of the Fifth Symphony as a representation of “Fate knocking at the door”

(sections ii, v, vi, ix).

I did not aim for this variety of ways of manipulating Beethoven’s music

because I believed that this is the way Ludwig van should always be realised. On the

contrary, I think that even using only one of these ways would produce a perfectly valid

performance of the work. That said, as this was the final product of my research on

Ludwig van, I was interested in exploring various different ways in which its material

can be organised. Apart from that, as I was aiming for a performance of twenty to thirty

minutes, I felt that employing several different approaches to Ludwig van was a good

way to keep this realisation from being monotonous.

Another resolution for my final realisation of Ludwig van was to include

theatrical elements in the performance, as I had done in my first realisation. Once again,

I do not think this is a fundamental requirement of the score, but I believe that it is in

accordance with Kagel’s spirit and his work, as he was primarily associated with

Page 167: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

167

instrumental theatre, particularly in his earlier years. I attempted to incorporate these

elements into the music more effectively than I had managed the first time, as I felt that

they had not been sufficiently linked to the music then, resulting in them seeming

superfluous. The main way in which I incorporated dramatic elements into this second

performance was by employing a collage of Beethoven’s letters alongside that of his

music. I regard this as perfectly valid in a performance of Ludwig van, as I still only

used material whose author is Beethoven, and my role was limited to rearranging this

material, exactly as with the musical material. This can also be considered a typically

Kagelian technique, since this is exactly what he himself did with Brahms’ letters in

Variationen ohne Fuge, with Debussy’s interviews in Interview avec D., and elsewhere.

As with the musical collage, in the textual collage I employed different approaches:

using short or long fragments, from words to paragraphs, keeping the meaning of the

text unaltered or changing it deliberately in order to suit my own purposes.

Another aim I had for my final performance of Ludwig van was to include some

allusions to the film, both by including an actual film, and by referring to some of its

themes. Once again, I do not regard this as necessary in every performance of the score,

since I see the film as a separate work and since the only actual connection between the

film and the score, apart from the name, is that the latter is derived from one sequence

of the former. Nevertheless, having studied the film in depth, I believe that the issues it

addresses concerning Beethoven’s reception are still relevant today. Furthermore, I

believe that addressing the same issues through a performance of Ludwig van is a very

interesting and challenging experiment: after all, it is a common practice for Kagel to

comment on aspects of musical life through music itself, as he does with Sonant and

Sur scène.

As far as choosing the musicians of the ensemble is concerned, I applied the

same principles as in my first realisation: I chose people with whom I had worked in the

past and whom I considered as very talented, willing to experiment, with original ideas

and a team spirit; furthermore, I had collaborated with most of them in realising musical

works with theatrical elements in the past, and I knew that apart from being skilled

musicians, they were good performers in a broader sense. Knowing some of Kagel’s

troublesome experiences in realising Ludwig van with conservative performers,

however good musicians they might have been (as for example the incident with the

Page 168: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

168

pianist from London Sinfonietta mentioned in section IV.5.A), I was convinced that it

was important to have the ensemble’s support and enthusiasm in trying to perform

Beethoven’s music as “music of today”, as Kagel himself would put it. The ensemble

consisted of two pianists, two violinists and singers, a clarinettist and a cellist.

Page 169: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

169

B. Structure - staging

As I wrote earlier in this chapter, I based the structure of my first realisation on a

work by Beethoven, Elf Neue Bagatellen, op.119, following the example of Kagel

himself, who, in his interview with Karl Faust, said that the structure of his recording of

Ludwig van was based on the Diabelli Variations, op.120. This helped me maintain a

sense of unity and coherence in the realisation, but also had its downside: I had several

ideas that could not fit in this structure, and therefore I had to abandon them in favour of

it. In the time between the first and the second realisation, after my visit to the Paul

Sacher Foundation and my research on the recording, I drew the conclusion that the

connection to the Diabelli Variations, if there is any connection, had to be quite loose,

as I argue in section IV.4. Therefore, I decided not to use any single Beethoven work as

a model for the structure of my final realisation; thus I would not have to compromise

my ideas to a set musical form.

As an alternative, I decided to build this realisation around a text that I

constructed with a selection from Beethoven’s letters. In this way, the structure would

be based on the dramaturgical elements of the performance, rather than on a specific

musical composition, bringing the realisation closer to Kagel’s instrumental theatre.

This is not to suggest that I intended the text to be the dominant element of the

performance: Ludwig van is essentially a musical work, and even the text used would be

directly related to the music. The musical material would still be the basis of the

performance, but it would be organised according to the text, which would hold the

whole performance together and make it easier to follow. Based on that thought I

determined the structure of the whole performance: it consisted of ten sections, where

the odd-numbered sections consisted of pure music and the even-numbered ones

featured text along with the music. I organised the quotations from Beethoven’s letters

into five categories, according to their subject, each of which categories were used in

each of the even-numbered sections.

As for the staging of the performance, I took two decisions that helped give a

visual element to the realisation and avoid a conventional, concert-like performance.

The first one was to cover all chairs and music stands on stage with pages of

Beethoven’s scores. In this way, apart from providing a reference to the film Ludwig

Page 170: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

170

van and to the connection between the film and the score, I aimed to transform the stage

into a space of some aesthetic interest: not merely the place where musicians stand to

play their instruments, but an intriguing sight that is already part of the performance;

after all, many of Kagel’s “musical” works, are not only about sound, but also about

image.

The second decision I took had to do with the fact that each of the sections of

my realisation would have a slightly different instrumentation, so there were many

moments where the instrumentalists would have to remain silent. I felt that it would not

be dramatically convincing if the people who were not playing in one section simply put

down their instruments and waited for their turn to play, like orchestral players: I

thought that it would spoil the visual element of the performance if, for example, in a

piano solo section, all the other instrumentalists were on stage waiting patiently for me

to finish in order to play their parts. On the other hand, I did not want them to leave the

stage in between sections, as most of the sections were relatively short and moving on

and off stage all the time would make the performance feel segmented. Thus, I decided

to have all performers wear Beethoven masks and stay motionless whenever they were

not playing, and reappear with their own personalities whenever they had to play. The

musicians themselves became theatrical objects during the sections in which they were

not playing, and in this way the incorporation of the theatrical element did not look

forced or pretentious, but became one more element that contributed to the sense of

unity of the performance. Furthermore, Beethoven’s presence was felt throughout the

performance, something which served the concept of the opening video (“Opening

credits”, described below).

There follows a brief account of each of the sections:

i. Prologue (“Opening credits”)

A short video alluding to chapter 2 of the film. Beethoven is depicted arriving at

Goldsmiths in June 2011 – we only see his shoes and gloves, as he is supposed to be

behind the camera. He gives some coins to a street beggar who is playing his Ode to Joy

on the melodica, he strolls through the corridors and arrives at the practice rooms where

several people are practising his music. Peeking through the windows he sees that the

Page 171: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

171

musicians momentarily transform into Beethoven himself.14 He finally enters one of the

rooms, where two pianists are rehearsing his Variations on Ich denke dein for four

hands, WoO74. He informs them that it is time for them to go on stage, whereupon they

rush towards the Great Hall, where the performance is about to begin.

The film at the beginning of the performance serves as a link between Kagel’s

film and this realisation, between past and present: Beethoven’s “visit” to Goldsmiths in

June 2011 underlines how relevant Ludwig van can still be today, despite having been

composed over forty years ago. The Beethoven masks that the practising musicians are

wearing depict the effort to approach the “real” Beethoven, to understand his music and

play it as he would. The fact that the masks appear and disappear shows the ambiguity

of this undertaking and poses questions: is it really possible to know how Beethoven

would play his music, or is this just an illusion, however historically informed we are?

And even if it is possible, is there really a point in trying to suppress our own

personality in order to play exactly like Beethoven might have?

ii. Text: Letter Endings (“End credits”)

The two pianists play cadences from various Beethoven sonatas while the two violinists

recite endings from some of Beethoven’s letters. Each cadence was chosen in such a

way that its character matches or comments on the character of each text fragment. The

fragments become shorter in the course of the section, and from one point onwards the

text fragments are recited in very quick succession over a very long and dramatic

cadence in C major from the Waldstein Sonata, op.53 (bars 294-311). This cadence

stays unresolved, and the section finishes with another, much more playful and naive

cadence in C major, the one from the Andante from the Piano Sonata, op.14 no.2, while

Beethoven signs the letter in French and in German.

The title of this section and the fact that the performance starts with endings of

Beethoven’s works and letters are reminders that Ludwig van takes place on a “meta”

level; it is a homage by Beethoven but at the same time it is post-Beethoven, since it

mainly has to do with the way we see and interpret Beethoven rather than with

Beethoven himself. Similarly, the unresolved dominant chords hint at the fact that

although Beethoven is long dead, his music and the possibilities of different

interpretations it offers are far from exhausted: there is so much we can still discover in

14 This is done by alternating the musicians’ actual images with images of the same people wearing masks with his face on them.

Page 172: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

172

Beethoven’s music, and so many different ways in which we can perform it, that we

cannot put a full stop or, in musical terms, a perfect cadence to our explorations of him

and his music.

iii. Solo Piano Recital (“Rage over a lost page turner”)

In this section I played various extracts from Beethoven’s piano sonatas in a very

“personal” way, deliberately not following the rules of any performance tradition, trying

to play as I would if I had no knowledge whatsoever about Beethoven and his music.

This could have sounded distasteful, but in my opinion it gave an interestingly different

reading of this music. I was challenged to attempt what might actually be impossible:

pretending not to know Beethoven’s music and trying to free myself from the rules of

traditional performance is certainly an extremely difficult task, but I felt it was worth

trying, as I believed that it would make me realise new things about this music. As

Francis Bacon says in one of his Essays quoted by Borges in his story “The Immortal”,

since, according to Plato, all knowledge is remembrance, then all novelty is oblivion

(Bacon, Essays, LVIII, quoted in Borges, 1964: 109). In Beethoven’s case, I believe that

we must try to forget all the knowledge we have about his music; although it is

practically impossible, the effort itself can give us the chance to discover it anew. This

section was inspired by Kagel’s suggestion of a piano recital where the pianist would

allow Beethoven’s music “to flow through his fingers […] without perhaps playing any

movement entirely”. Kagel claims that he prefers this experience “to the commercial-

ethical-musical-social pressures which compel a performer to present complete works

for the umpteenth time” (Kagel, 1970: VIII-IX).

There was some degree of indeterminacy in this section, as the page-turner

turned random pages in random moments, while I was trying to play what I saw, as

accurately as possible. In this way I made it easier for myself to “forget” my

preconceptions about how Beethoven’s music should be played, since I did not have the

time to think about tempi, pedalling, articulation and so on before playing the extracts I

had in front of me; the fact that I was totally unprepared for the next page every time the

page was turned, was a “technique” that transformed Beethoven’s scores into unknown

scores, completely free from the “burden” of Beethoven’s image. Finally, by giving the

page-turner the power to dictate which page of Beethoven’s sonatas I would play, I also

tried to cast light on the role of the page-turner, which is always taken for granted in

concerts: the best page-turner is one that will not even be noticed. When a page-turner

Page 173: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

173

steps outside their traditional role and turns the pages whenever he/she likes, the

hierarchy between page-turner and pianist is overturned and the latter is at the former’s

mercy. By adding this humorous aspect to this section, I tried to cast light on musical

life in a similar way that Kagel employed in his Sonant, as I have mentioned before.

iv. Text: Immortal Beloved (“Ludwig in love”)

The text for this section was a collage from Beethoven’s letters to women to whom he

seems to have been attracted, especially from the famous letter to the Immortal Beloved,

which has been the object of research and has inspired speculation on who the recipient

was, as well as a well-known feature film of the same title (Rose, 1994). I set these

extracts to music by Beethoven, trying to give it the character of popular music through

the harmony used and the style of interpretation. As introduction and accompanying

pattern for the piano I chose the Adagio Sostenuto from the Moonlight Sonata (Example

6a and 6c), whereas the singing lines and the harmonic progressions were from the

Arioso from the Piano Sonata, op.110 (Example 6a), the Thema from the Diabelli

Variations (Example 6b), and the Allegretto from the Seventh Symphony, op.92

(Example 6c). The mood and singing style of this song were very clearly intended as a

parody, especially since I interpreted the divine Arioso in a most melodramatic way.

Nevertheless, the quotation from the Seventh symphony at the end of the song was

suddenly serene and “introverted”, sung pianissimo by the two female violinists: this

created some ambiguity as to whether the song was actually more of a parody or of a

celebration of Beethoven’s emotional life.

This section was an allusion to Kagel’s opera Aus Deutschland in which, in

some cases, the Lieder texts are sung in English in a jazzy style, sounding not far from

commercial music. By imitating Kagel’s ironic and humorous approach, I intended to

make it clear that if we take works of great authors away from their context, which is

what Kagel does with literary texts in Aus Deutschland and with music in Ludwig van,

they might lose their artistic value: if we read Beethoven’s letter to the Immortal

Beloved ignoring the fact that it is the great composer talking to the woman with whom

he was in love, we can actually find it simple, or even banal. But for me the sense of the

ridiculous does not by any means overshadow the sense of awe for the great composer:

in reality, by acknowledging his human, sentimental and even melodramatic nature, we

can appreciate the divinity of his music on a deeper level.

Page 174: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

174

Example 6a, June 2011 realisation, “Ludwig in love”, bb. 9-12

Example 6b, June 2011 realisation, “Ludwig in love”, bb. 16-20

Example 6c, June 2011 realisation, “Ludwig in love”, bb. 63-66

Page 175: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

175

v. Alberti bass (“Ludwig van Alberti”)

In this section I decided to isolate a very common feature of Beethoven’s music, but one

that does not directly refer to him as a composer, since it has been used in most

keyboard compositions of the Classical era: it consisted exclusively of Alberti bass

accompaniment features, with no melody on top of them. Thus, this was a section

referring to the music of Beethoven’s time, rather than his music in particular, but it also

alluded to minimalist music, since the material on which it was based was actually a

motive of four notes, repeated and transformed gradually. At the beginning the motives

were combined in a consonant way and were played simultaneously – i.e. each

instrument was playing the first note of the four-note motive at the same time. Later the

texture became more chromatic and each entry of the motive was shifted by one quaver,

in such a way that there were audible chromatic motives shared between the

instruments, as shown in Example 7. Towards the end there was an increase in the

density, the range and the dynamics, creating an extremely dissonant sound which was

suddenly replaced by an ironically triumphant dominant seventh in C major, the key of

the next section.

Example 7, June 2011 realisation, “Ludwig van Alberti”, bb. 16-20

vi. Text: Politics (“Queentet”)

This section dealt with Beethoven’s image as a political man who, according to popular

belief, opposed aristocracy and did not want to be a court musician, but a free artist. A

very important aspect of this belief has to do with a meeting between Beethoven and

Goethe, during which they allegedly came across the Imperial family and Goethe took

his hat off and stood on the side while Beethoven advanced stubbornly. This incident

Page 176: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

176

was actually invented by Bettina Brentano, who included it in a fake letter which she

claimed Beethoven had written to her (Goddard, 1927: 169). In this section I used parts

of this letter, although it was not written by Beethoven himself, and therefore cannot be

considered his intellectual property. However, I considered it legitimate to use it, since

Ludwig van is about Beethoven’s reception, and the letter in question has played a big

part in shaping his reception.

As this was one of the first “facts” about Beethoven that I ever learnt, and it has

influenced my perception of the composer to a great extent, although involuntarily, I

recorded various schoolchildren reciting this text and played back the recording during

the performance, while a video of a childlike drawing of the incident was played. At the

same time I was playing the first four variations Beethoven composed on God save the

King, WoO78, but in reverse order, starting from the fourth, so that the audience would

not recognise the tune from the beginning but would gradually find it more and more

familiar. After the text and the video, I played the theme while one of my performers

encouraged the audience to stand up and sing the British national anthem, showing a

totally different reality to the one Bettina Brentano wanted to create, as far as

Beethoven’s political views are concerned: the radical revolutionary appears to have

composed music on royal themes. This section finished with another oxymoron: the

pompousness of the anthem was followed by each instrument playing the Ode to Joy in

different tempi and tonalities, creating a chaos reminiscent of the Tower of Babel. In

this way, I attempted to express my scepticism towards the ideal of brotherhood – so

vividly expressed in the Ode to Joy – and how plausible it is after all.

vii. Improvisation on given notes (“Ludwig van Kagel”)

This was the most indeterminate section of my performance, and the only one for which

I actually used Kagel’s score. But, as I explain in section V.2.A, I did not want to use it

in a completely indeterminate way: following Alexandre Tharaud’s example (described

in section IV.5.C), I chose specific motives from Kagel’s score, which mainly alluded to

the natural scale of A minor (the Aeolian mode) in order to maintain a sense of tonality.

Unlike Tharaud, I did not want to write out a collage and control every detail of the

result for this section. I decided to ask the musicians to “improvise” on these motives,

that is, to play them in free rhythm, style, order and dynamics, but, of course, without

changing the notes, as this would be contrary to the work’s instructions. This is the way

Page 177: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

177

in which I chose to let each member of the ensemble pay their own, more personal

tribute to Beethoven.

viii. Text: Beethoven’s temperament (“Quarreltet”)

This is another section in which the focus was on a popular belief about Beethoven, one

that probably has more truth in it than the one about his political views, referred to in

section vi: the text used was a collage from Beethoven’s angry statements, presented in

the form of an argument between me and the other pianist while we played a slow and

serene piece of his music, the Rondo from the Piano Sonata, op.6 for piano four-hands.

We started by exchanging insults in a calm voice and ended up shouting at each other,

while the music we played remained calm and harmonious till the end, when my duo

partner slapped me and left the stage. This juxtaposition aimed to show the humanity of

Beethoven. Contrary to the tendency for musealisation in Beethoven’s reception, I

wanted to highlight the fact that, despite the sublime music he composed, he was not

perfect: he was a human being, and actually one with a very strong temperament and a

vivid imagination in making up insulting phrases, such as the ones used in the text of

this section.

ix. Avant-garde (“Ludwig (a)van(t) garde”)

This section expressed musically the repressed anger of the previous one. It was another

solo piano episode, for which I gathered dissonant chords from various Beethoven

works and presented them one after the other and unresolved. Thus the music lost every

trace of tonality and sounded like a succession of unrelated pitches. My aim for this

section was for it to sound like a piano piece of the second half of the 20th century, in

the style of Boulez or Stockhausen. Thus I made it very angular, with abrupt changes

within a wide range of dynamics, speed and pitch (Example 8a). Although the dynamics

changed very frequently, there was a general build up to a fortissimo possibile: at the

end of this section, I played the opening motive of the Fifth symphony, one of the most

famously tragic moments of Beethoven’s work, in heavy dissonant chords (Example

8b). Immediately after that, a knock on the door was heard, imitating this rhythm and

alluding to Schindler’s saying that this motive symbolised fate knocking at the door. On

hearing the knock, I escaped the stage and in came a performer wearing a Beethoven

mask, in order to recite the last monologue while standing behind the audience.

Page 178: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

178

Example 8a, June 2011 realisation, “Ludwig (a)van(t) garde”, bb. 1-7

Example 8b, June 2011 realisation, “Ludwig (a)van(t) garde”, bb. 18-20

x. Text: Self-pity (“I am not human yet”)

For this section I constructed a collage of sentences from various letters, making up a

monologue in which Beethoven talks about himself. The character ranged from

melancholic to desperate, and there was a sense of self-pity in most of the quotations.

As for the music, I did what Kagel does with the Ghost Trio in his recording (Side A,

11’00-16’45) and what he suggests in his letter to Rosenberg (quoted in section IV.5.B);

namely, I asked all performers apart from the two pianists to play motives only from

one specific work, so that “the performance becomes strangely concrete” (Kagel, from

Page 179: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

179

the same latter). The work I chose for this was the third movement (Adagio molto e

mesto) from the String Quartet, op.59 no.1, as I believed that its character matched the

monologue I had created. During the rehearsal procedures we determined how the

musicians would react to the text: at times playing random motives from specific

sections of the work, each in their own time, at times playing all together. Towards the

end of the monologue the music becomes more and more sparse and the musicians

leave the stage one by one. Beethoven is left alone reciting the last line of his

monologue: “Silence. There is no other way”.

Page 180: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

180

C. Performance evaluation

I was very satisfied with the outcome of my final realisation of Ludwig van. Both my

preparation and the ensemble’s creativity, hard work and support made it possible to

produce a result which outdid my expectations in only four full-day rehearsals. Without

changing much of my planned structure of the realisation, we made some decisions

regarding the staging which held the whole performance together in a very effective

way. It proved to be the right decision to choose people with whom I had already

worked in the past, and who already had some experience in the performing arts as well

as in music performance, as their contribution both in the musical and in the theatrical

aspect of the performance was crucial. At the same time, the fact that I had prepared all

their parts, even for the most indeterminate sequences, before the rehearsals started,

saved a lot of rehearsal time which we could then use for more elaborate work on the

material.

The performance itself was, I considered, very successful. The “opening credits”

video worked very well as an introduction: the video artist who edited it juxtaposed the

images of the musicians with and without the Beethoven masks in such a way that it

seemed like an optical illusion; and the sound in the corridor of the practice rooms

resembled the sound in the music room sequence of the film, from which the score was

derived. This was important, especially since I decided to exclude a totally

indeterminate reading of the score from the performance itself; since the sound in the

practice rooms was a totally random mixture of several Beethoven scores, the result was

similar to an indeterminate performance of Kagel’s score. In the “end credits” section,

the texts and the music were very well coordinated, and I was satisfied with the

combination of the letter endings with the cadences. Seeing the video of “Rage over a

lost page turner”, I was satisfied that although it is obvious that I was struggling to read

the music that the page turner put in front of me at each moment, it is impressive how I

managed to continue playing until the end. “Ludwig in love” created the ambiguity I

intended between parody and homage: on the one hand the music and the women’s

beautiful voices were particularly moving, and on the other hand my over-dramatic

performance and the lyrics sounded quite ridiculous. “Ludwig van Alberti” also worked

entirely as planned: rhythmically perfect and with a wide dynamic range, from a

seamless pianissimo to a disturbing and dissonant fortissimo. In “Queentet”, the

Page 181: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

181

coordination between the video and the variations I was playing worked very well, and I

was pleasantly surprised when the whole audience rose to sing the National Anthem,

many of them with the desired pompousness. “Ludwig van Kagel” came naturally out

of the chaos of the previous section and gradually obtained the melancholic and

reflective character I wanted it to have. In “Quarreltet”, I believe that my argument with

the other pianist and its building up occured very naturally, while the music retained its

peaceful character almost until the end. As for “Ludwig (a)van(t) garde”, I was told by

members of the audience that it really sounded like a pseudo-avant-garde piano piece,

and I was very content that my intention came across clearly; also, hearing the recording

I was satisfied that the opening motive from the Fifth Symphony was well prepared but

not predictable. Finally, “I am not human yet”, like “Ludwig in love”, also sounded like

a mixture between parody and homage; but unlike the latter, this one turned out to be

slightly more of a tribute to Beethoven’s sufferings rather than a caricature of

Beethoven’s self-pity; and this was the way I wanted to end my realisation of Ludwig

van: since the whole performance was intentionally light and humorous, I wanted its

end to be solemn and reflective.

Overall I felt that my aspirations for this performance were accomplished.

Firstly, it was an entertaining performance which at the same time challenged issues of

Beethoven’s reception. The problems of the performance of Beethoven’s music were

addressed, both in the initial video of the practising musicians and their struggle to play

like Beethoven would, and in “Rage over a lost page turner” where I tried to perform his

music as if I did not know anything about it. The myth around his love life and his

always being rejected was parodied in “Ludwig in love”. The popular belief that he was

a revolutionary was deconstructed in “Queentet”. The image of Beethoven as a divine,

god-like creature was rejected in “Quarreltet”. And his misery, but also the

pompousness of his self-pitying statements, were parodied in “I am not human yet”.

Thus, like the film Ludwig van, my realisation of the score addressed major issues of

how we see Beethoven, and reflected on how much of what we believe about him is

actually true. Of course, I did not try to give answers to such questions through my

realisation: what I considered important was to ask the questions and make the audience

reflect on the myths we all have in our minds around Beethoven.

Page 182: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

182

Furthermore, I believe that I managed to make Beethoven’s music sound like

music of today, of course in the way I see music of today – it would anyway have been

impossible to produce an objective view of such a wide concept. For example, “Ludwig

van Alberti” had some minimalist aspects, in that it was all built on a four-note motive

subjected to gradual change. “Ludwig (a)van(t) garde” imitated the sound of piano

music of the 1960s and 1970s, viewed in retrospect, some decades after that time.

“Ludwig in love” had pop music and musical theatre elements, both in its

“composition” and in the way it was performed, and its amateur-style performance

alluded to the talent shows of our time, in which amateurism is projected and idealised.

There were aspects of free improvisation in “Ludwig van Kagel”, although the notes

were actually given. And of course, my realisation of Ludwig van was a performance of

instrumental theatre. Thus, although all music played during the performance was by

Beethoven, it did sound as if it was composed in the last few years, as Kagel himself

intended it to sound. Moreover, there were aspects in this performance which were

characteristic of the time in which it took place, as well as aspects of my personality and

the personalities of the other performers. I felt that by experimenting with Beethoven’s

music and by using it to create new sounds, I brought this music closer to myself, and –

I hope – closer to today’s audiences.

Finally, although I did not use Kagel’s score but for one section, I was faithful

both to its main instruction – to only use music composed by Beethoven – and to

Kagel’s spirit. I started the performance with a video with a very clear reference to

Kagel’s film. As I claimed earlier, I addressed many of the issues with which he deals in

the film. I included aspects of instrumental theatre, which is Kagel’s own concept. The

ambiguity between parody and homage is something that exists also in his work, and

arguably one of the aspects which made Ludwig van such a controversial work. But

most importantly, I believe I followed Kagel’s spirit by experimenting with the material

in my own ways and feeling free with it. As I have argued earlier, I believe the most

important task that Ludwig van sets to the performer, is to act as a composer: to be

creative, to take responsibilities and to make decisions. And I am satisfied with the way

I tackled this challenge.

Page 183: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

183

Conclusions

Kagel’s Ludwig van is a unique work of art, one that takes a number of different forms

and creates a number of controversies. It is a film that reported on Beethoven’s misuse

by his own admirers, while these same admirers accused the film of being disrespectful

towards Beethoven. It is also a score that Kagel generated, but which used only collages

of Beethoven’s music, without a single note not written by Beethoven himself.

Moreover, it is a score by Kagel with the subtitle “Homage by Beethoven” instead of

“Homage to Beethoven”, as would be expected. It is also a recording of the score, made

by Kagel, in which he does not make use of the score or his own instructions for its

performance at all. Apart from these, it is a work that is re-composed every time it is

performed: every single performance of the score is different, not only in terms of the

musical material used and the order in which it is presented, but also in terms of the

ways of processing the material, the degree of control or indeterminacy applied to the

final result, the instrumentation and the duration of the performance.

The main goal of this dissertation has been to study all these different forms and

to investigate all the oxymora that Ludwig van seems to create, in order to understand

the work in depth and to approach Kagel’s ideas behind it. Through analysing the film

and its most important topics, examining the score and its connection to philosophical

and artistic movements of its time, and reviewing Kagel’s and others’ realisations of the

score, I aimed to capture the spirit of the work, so that, eventually, I would be able to

realise it myself. By doing this, I would have the opportunity to examine Ludwig van

once more, from a different perspective: that of the performer. I would face the

performance problems that arise from this work and I would find my own ways of

dealing with them, trying at the same time to be in accordance with Kagel’s intentions.

I believe that my research on the film was crucial to my understanding of the

whole concept of Ludwig van and my realisation of it. First of all, because the film was

the first form in which Ludwig van came into being: had it not existed, the score would

never have appeared, at least not in the form it appeared. Secondly, because all the

problems of Beethoven’s reception that Kagel detected are to be identified in the film

and, more importantly, they are all still relevant in the present day, at least in my

Page 184: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

184

opinion; thus, they can become a source of inspiration for a realisation of Ludwig van at

the time of writing. Thirdly, Kagel’s ironic approach towards Beethoven and his

reception, combined with his love for the composer, which is also apparent in the film,

is something that, in my opinion, should be present in every realisation of Ludwig van

which claims to take into account Kagel’s concept of it. Finally, the music of the film

demonstrates some of the ways in which Kagel manipulates Beethoven’s music, both

through collage and, more frequently, through inventive instrumentation and

unconventional performance.

My research on the score was also invaluable to my realisation of Ludwig van.

Examining the score and its instructions made me reflect on how free musicians can be

when performing a work that does not impose any strict rules on them, but leaves them

room for creativity. Some of the answers to my speculation on the limits of this freedom

came when I investigated the work’s associations to artistic movements and

philosophical theories of the time. By revealing its postmodern nature and dealing with

the questions of intellectual authority it raises, I established the fact that the distinctions

between the roles of performer and composer in this work are quite loose, and that the

performer is expected to take an active part in the composition – or synthesis, in the

sense of combining particles into a whole – of its realisation. This belief was

strengthened through comparing Ludwig van with other experimental works and

establishing that its indeterminacy is not a way of avoiding subjectivity, but a way of

trusting the performer’s creativity. Morever, it was further supported through my

examination of Kagel’s recording and other performances of Ludwig van. The

recording, as well as Kagel’s notes on it, proved that Kagel did not follow his own

instructions when realising it; on the contrary, he re-composed Ludwig van, leaving no

room for doubt as to how much freedom this work allows. Furthermore, Kagel’s

recording and the other realisations which I studied, from Tharaud’s recording to

reviews or reports of live performances, gave me more ideas on ways in which

Beethoven’s music can be disassembled and reassembled for a realisation of Ludwig

van.

All these helped me immensely to prepare myself to take up the role of

performer-composer needed for my realisations of this work, so that I could examine it

also from the perspective of the musician apart from that of the researcher. My first

Page 185: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

185

realisation gave me the experience of organising such a performance, of taking up

responsibilities and making decisions that are normally part of the composer’s role. It

also gave me the opportunity to realise my ideas and to see how they sound, as well as

what impact they have on the musicians and the audience. Finally, it was my first

experience in staging a work of instrumental theatre – since I chose to include theatrical

elements in Ludwig van – and to reflect on the issue of direction that arose.

Consequently, in my next realisation of Ludwig van I was able to use both the

knowledge I had acquired through my research and the experience I had gained through

the first realisation. At the same time, I allowed more of my personal creativity into it,

as I believe to be Kagel’s desire. In the end, for every realisation of Ludwig van the

intellectual authorship is divided among three parties: Beethoven, Kagel and the

performer(s). In my final realisation I aimed to combine my love for Beethoven and my

knowledge of his music, with my understanding of Kagel’s approach to Beethoven, and

ultimately with my own approach to both composers. Thus, this realisation was the final

product of the present dissertation, as it would not be possible without it.

This is certainly not to imply that my final realisation was definitive in any

sense: Kagel’s Ludwig van can be interpreted in innumerable different ways, and what I

offered was one that expressed me, at this time, under the present circumstances. This

realisation may have been the final product of my research, but, whereas in my

dissertation I attempted to find the truth regarding Kagel’s concept and intentions, in my

realisation I did not aim to interpret the work in “the right way”. This would contradict

the findings of my own research: in Ludwig van, there is no eternal truth to look for, no

author’s message to interpret, no essence of the work to grasp, no real Beethoven to get

to: the grand narratives of modernism are irrelevant here. It is an invitation for the

performers to find their own ephemeral truth, to express their own intentions, to create

rather than decipher a meaning, to invent their own Beethoven. Instead of trying to find

the “real” Beethoven behind all the misconceptions about him that the myth has created,

Kagel proposes that the “real” Beethoven is the one that is relevant to us, if only

because this is the only way to bring him back to life. Defying the utopia of “authentic”

performance and avoiding an objective tribute to a Beethoven we cannot really discern,

with Ludwig van he proposes a subjective love declaration to our own Beethoven.

Page 186: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

186

Bibliography

Primary sources Kagel, Mauricio, Ludwig van, Hommage von Beethoven, (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Ludwig van: Ein Bericht, Winter & Winter, DVD 915 006-7 (2007) ---, Ludwig van, William Pearson, Carlos Feller, Siegfried Palm, Bruno Canino, Frederic Rzewski, Gérard Ruymen, Egbert Ojstersek, Saschko Gawriloff, Deutsche Grammophon, LP 2530014 (1970) Secondary Sources Adorno, Theodor, “Valéry Proust Museum”, Prisms (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1967), 173-86 ---, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998) Attinello, Paul, “Kagel, Mauricio”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eds. S. Sadie, J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 13, 309-12 ---, “Imploding the System: Kagel and the Deconstruction of Modernism”, Postmodern Music/ Postmodern Thought, eds. J. Lochhead, J. Auner (New York: Routledge, 2002), 263-84 Barthes, Roland, S/Z: An Essay, translated by Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974) ---, “The Death of the Author”, Image-Music-Text, translated by Steven Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142-8 Beal, Amy C., New Music, New Allies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006) Beethoven, Ludwig van, Beethoven’s letters, translated by J. S. Shedlock, ed. A. C.Kalischer (New York: Dover Publications, 1972) Behrman, David, 1965, ‘What Indeterminate Notation Determines’, Perspectives of New Music, vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 1964), 58–73 Boretz, Benjamin and Cone, Edward T., ed., Perspectives on Notation and Performance (New York: Norton, 1976) Borges, Jorge Luis, Dreamtigers, translated by Mildred Boyer, Harold Morland (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985)

Page 187: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

187

---, Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1998) [1998a] ---, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory, translated by Andrew Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1998) [1998b] ---, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, various translators (New York: New Directions, 1964) Bosseur, Jean-Yves, ‘Dossier Kagel’, Musique en jeu, no. 7 (1972), 88-126 Boucourechliev, André, Ombres, pour orchestre á cordes (London: Universal Edition, 1973) Brix, Christian, “Ludwig van” – Zu Mauricio Kagels Beethoven-Film, MA diss., Freie Universität, Berlin, 2004 Buch, Esteban, Beethoven’s Ninth, translated by Richard Miller (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003) Burgess, Anthony, a Clockwork Orange (London: Heinemann, 1962) Burnham, Scott, Beethoven hero (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1996) ---, “The four ages of Beethoven: critical reception and the canonic composer”, The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, ed. G. Stanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 272-91 ---, “Beethoven, Ludwig van: Posthumous influence and reception”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eds. S. Sadie, J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 3, 110-4 Burkholder, J. Peter, “Collage”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eds. S. Sadie, J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 6, 110-1 Cage, John, Silence, Lectures and Writings, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961) ---, Cage on Cage (London: Writers Forum, 1998) Chanan, Michael, “Kagel’s films”, Tempo, New Series, no. 110 (September 1974), 45-6 Cope, David, Techniques of the Contemporary Composer (Belmont: Schirmer, 1997) Cott, Jonathan, Stockhausen: Conversations with the composer (London: Picador, 1974) Danuser, Hermann, “On Postmodernism in Music”, International Postmodernism, Theory and Literary Practice (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1997), 157-66

Page 188: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

188

Decarsin, François, “Liszt’s ‘Nuages Gris’ and Kagel’s ‘Unguis Incarnatus Est’: a Model and its Issue”, translated by Jonathan Dunsby, Music Analysis, vol. 4, no. 3 (1985), 259-63 Dennis, David B., Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996) ---, “Beethoven at large: reception in literature, the arts, philosophy, and politics”, The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, ed. G. Stanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 292-305 Deliège, Celestin, “Indétermination et improvisation”, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, vol. 2, no. 2 (December 1971), 155-91 Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976) ---, Positions, translated by Alan Bass (London: The Athlone Press, 1981) ---, Glas, translated by John P. Leavey and Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986) ---, “Letter to a Japanese friend”, Derrida and différance, eds. D. Wood, R. Bernasconi (Warwick: Parousia Press, 1985), 1-6 Dorian, Frederick, The History of Music in Performance (New York: Norton, 1942) Eco, Umberto, Reflections on The name of the Rose, translated by William Weaver (London: Secker & Warburg, 1985) Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich, Zur Geschichte der Beethoven-Rezeption. Beethoven 1970 (Mainz: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1972) Escal, Françoise, “Hétéronome/Autonome: La Technique du Collage dans Ludwig van de Mauricio Kagel”, Montages/Collages, Actes du second colloque du CICADA (Pau: Publications de l’Université de Pau, 1993), 51-7 Farabet, Rene and Jameux, Dominique, “Une panique createur”, Musique en jeu, no. 11 (June 1973), 39-64 Fink, Carole, Gassert, Philipp and Junker, Detlef, 1968: The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1998) Fischer, Emil, “Collagen aus Geschnipseltem”, Düsseldorfer Nachrichten (5 January 1971) Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich, The Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder (London: Gollancz, 1976)

Page 189: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

189

Foster, Hal, “Introduction”, The Anti-Aesthetic, Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. H. Foster (New York: The New Press, 1998), ix-xvii Foucault, Michel, “Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur ?”, Dits et Écrits (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), vol. 1, 789-821 Friedman, Ken, ed., The Fluxus reader (Chichester: Academy Editions, 1998) Frimmel, Theodor von, Beethoven’s äußere Erscheinung (Munich and Leipzig: 1905) Goddard, Scott, “Beethoven and Goethe”, Music & Letters, vol. 8, no. 2 (1927) Gorbman, Claudia, Unheard melodies: narrative film music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) Griffiths, Paul, A concise history of modern music from Debussy to Boulez (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) ---, “Unnecessary Music: Kagel at 50”, Musical Times, vol. 122, no. 1666 (1981), 811–12 [1981a] ---, Cage (London: Oxford University Press, 1981) [1981b] ---, Modern Music and After, Directions since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) ---, “Aleatory” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eds. S. Sadie, J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 1, 341-7 Group Mu, ed., Collages (Paris: Union Générale, 1978) Heile, Björn, “Collage vs. Compositional Control: The Interdependency of Modernist and Postmodernist Approaches in the Work of Mauricio Kagel”, Postmodern Music/ Postmodern Thought, eds. J. Lochhead, J. Auner (New York: Routledge, 2002), 287-99 ---, “‘Transcending quotation’: Cross-cultural musical representation in Mauricio Kagel's Die Stücke der Windrose für Salonorchester”, Music Analysis, vol. 23, no. 1 (March 2004), 57-85 [2004a] ---, “Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism”, Twentieth-Century Music, vol.1, no.2 (2004), 161-78 [2004b] ---, The music of Mauricio Kagel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) Henze, Hans Werner, Music and Politics: Collected Writings 1953-81, translated by Peter Labanyi. (London: Faber and Faber, 1982) Hillebrand, Christiane, Film als totale Komposition. Der Komponist, Filme- und Theatermann Mauricio Kagel (Frankfurt: Main, Peter Lang, 1996)

Page 190: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

190

Hilwig, Stuart J., The Revolt Against the Establishment – Students Versus the Press in West Germany and Italy, 1968: The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1998), 321-49 Hoeckner, Berthold, Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth Century Music (New York: Routledge, 2005) Holsträter, Knut, “Kompositionsweisen in Mauricio Kagels filmischer Arbeit zu Ludwig van, dargestellt an der Handschuhsequenz und dem Musikzimmer”, “Alte” Musik und “Neue” Medien, eds. J. Arndt, W. Keil (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2003), 56-81 ---, “Kagel, Beuys, Beethoven… in flux”, Joseph Beuys “Beethovens Küche”- eine Documentation in Fotografiesn von Brigitte Dannehl (Bedburg-Hau: Stiftung Museum Schloss Moyland, 2004), 111-21 Holzaepfel, John, “David Tudor and the Solo for Piano”, Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry and Art, eds. D.W. Bernstein, C. Hatch (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 137-56 ---, “Painting by Numbers: The Intersections of Morton Feldman and David Tudor”, The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts, ed. S. Johnson (New York, London: Routledge, 2002), 159-72 [2002a] ---, “Cage and Tudor”, The Cambridge Companion to John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 169-85 [2002b] Jencks, Charles, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977) ---, What is Post-Modernism? (Chichester: Wiley, 1996) Jones, Bryn and O’Donnell, Mike, eds., Sixties Radicalism and Social Movement Activism (London: Anthem Press, 2010) Kagel, Mauricio, Antithèse, for one performer with electronic and public sounds (Frankfurt: Henry Litolff’s Verlag, 1962) ---, Transición II (London: Universal Edition, 1963) ---, Anagrama (London: Universal Edition, 1965) ---, Hallelujah (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1967) [1967a] ---, Pas de cinq (London: Universal Edition, 1967) [1967b] ---, Improvisation ajoutée (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1968) ---, Ensemble (London: Universal Edition, 1969) ---, Debüt (London: Universal Edition, 1970)

Page 191: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

191

---, Einspielungen (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Freifahrt (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Kontradanse (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Parkett (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Repertoire (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Saison (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Spielplan (London: Universal Edition, 1970) ---, Metapiece (mimetics) (London: Universal Edition, 1971) [1971a] ---, Prima Vista (London: Universal Edition, 1971) [1971b] ---, Tremens (London: Universal Edition, 1973) ---, Unguis Incarnatus Est (London: Universal Edition, 1973) ---, Tamtam: Dialoge und Monologe zur Musik (Munich: Piper, 1975) ---, Aus Deutschland, libretto (Berlin: Deutsche Oper, 1981) ---, Das Buch der Hörspiele (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982) ---, “Beethoven”, interview with Jean-Michel Damian, Tam-tam: Monologues et Dialogues sur la musique, eds. J.-J. Nattiez, F. Schmidt (Paris: Collection Musique/Passé/Présent, 1983) ---, Fürst Igor, Strawinsky (London: Henry Litolff’s Verlag, 1988) ---, Camera oscura (London: Universal Edition, 1991) ---, “Worte über Musik” (Munich: Piper, 1991) [1991a] ---, “Post gleich Prä?”, Positionen, no. 9 (1991), 40-1 [1991b] ---, Sankt-Bach-Passion (London: Henry Litolff’s Verlag, 1994) ---, Interview avec D. (London: Henry Litolff’s Verlag, 1995) Kater, Michael H., The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Kazin, Alfred, “Whatever Happened to Criticism”, The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association, vol. 5, no. 2, (1972), 10-20

Page 192: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

192

Kesting, Marianne, ‘Musikalisierung des Theaters – Theatralisierung der Musik’, Melos, no.3 (1969), 101–9 Klüppelholz, Werner, Sprache als Musik (Herrenberg: Döring, 1976) ---, “Ludwig van: 1. Ein Bericht, 2. Hommage von Beethoven” Mauricio Kagel (1970–1980) (Köln: DuMont, 1981), 11-21 ---, and Prox, Lothar (eds.), Mauricio Kagel. Das filmische Werk I. 1965–85 (Köln: DuMont, 1985) ---, ed., Kagel …/1991 (Köln: DuMont, 1991) [1991a] ---, ed., Kagel, Skizzen – Korrekturen – Partituren (Köln: DuMont, 1991) [1991b] Knepler, Georg, “Das Beethoven-Bild in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bericht über den internationalen Beethoven-Kongress 10.-12. Dezember 1970 in Berlin, eds. H. A. Brockhaus, K. Niemann (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1971), 23-40 Knittel, Kay M., “Wagner, deafness, and the reception of Beethoven’s late style”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 51, no. 1 (1998), 49-82 Kostelanetz, Richard, ed., John Cage (New York: Praeger, 1970) ---, Conversing with John Cage (New York: Routledge, 2003) Kramer, Jonathan D., “The Nature and Origins of Musical Postmodernism”, Postmodern Music/ Postmodern Thought (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 13-26 Kramer, Mario, Joseph Beuys: Das Kapital Raum, 1970-1977 (Heidelberg: Staeck, 1991) Kristeva, Julia, “Word, Dialogue and Novel”, A Kristeva Reader, ed. T. Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) Kubrick, Stanley (writer and director), A Clockwork Orange [film], based on a novel by Anthony Burgess, Warner Bros., 1971 Kuivila, Ron, “Open Sources: Words, Circuits and the Notation-Realization Relation in the Music of David Tudor”, Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 14 (2004), 17-23 Kutschke, Beate, “The Celebration of Beethoven’s Bicentennial in 1970: The Antiauthoritarian Movement and its Impact on Radical Avant-garde and Postmodern Music in West Germany”, Musical Quarterly, vol. 94, nos. 3-4 (2010), 560-615 Lang, Paul Henry, “Introduction [To Special Issue Celebrating the Bicentennial of the Birth of Beethoven]” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 4 (October 1970), 505-14

Page 193: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

193

Leggewie, Claus, “A Laboratory of Postindustrial Society – Reassessing the 1960s in Germany”, 1968: The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1998), 277-94

Levi, Eric, Music in the Third Reich (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994) Ligeti, György, “Metamorphoses of Musical Form”, translated by C. Cardew, Die Reihe 7: Form Space (1965) Loy, Stephen, Beethoven and Radicalism: Socio-political Engagement and Awareness of Tradition in New Music, 1968–1977, PhD diss., University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006 Lüttwitz, Heinrich von, “Nur Katzenmusik nach Katerideden”, Rheinische Post (5 January 1971) Lyotard, Jean-François, The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge, translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) Marcuse, Harold, “The Revival of Holocaust Awareness in West Germany, Isreal, and the United States”, 1968: The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1998), 421-38 Mayer, Ralph, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1969) Mellers, Wilfrid, Beethoven and the voice of God (London, Faber, 1983) Meyer, Ernst Hermann, “Das Werk Ludwig van Beethovens und seine Bedeutung für das sozialistisch-realistische Gegenwartsschaffen”, Bericht über den internationalen Beethoven-Kongress 10.-12. Dezember 1970 in Berlin, eds. H. A. Brockhaus, K. Niemann (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1971), 581-92 Neue Rhein Zeitung, “Mehr Kagel als Beethoven”, Neue Rhein Zeitung (5 January 1971) Neue Zueriche Zeitung, Review for Martin Derungs realisation of Ludwig van, Neue Zueriche Zeitung (5 February 1978) Nicholls, David, “Avant-garde and Experimental Music”, Cambridge History of American Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Norris, Christopher, “Deconstruction”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eds. S. Sadie, J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 7, 122-7 Nyman, Michael, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974)

Page 194: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

194

Pace, Ian, “Notation, Time and the Performer’s Relationship to the Score in contemporary Music”, Unfolding Time: Studies in Temporality in Twentieth-Century Music, ed. D. Crispin (Ghent: Leuven University Press, 2009), 149-91 Perrin, Glyn. “Mauricio Kagel: Filmed Music/Composed Film”, Contact, vol. 23, (1981), 10-5. Porter, Andrew, ‘Mauricio Kagel’s … ’, New Yorker (26 September 1983) Potter, Garn Morton, The Role of Chance in Contemporary Music, Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University (1971) Potter, Keith, “Lutoslawski, Kagel: contrasted attitudes”, Classical Music Magazine, 23 December 1978, p.13 Pritchett, James, “David Tudor as Composer/Performer in Cage’s Variations II”, Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 14 (2004), 11-6 Reynolds, Roger, ‘Indeterminacy: some Considerations’, Perspectives of New Music, vol. 4, no. 1 (1965–6), 136–40 Roberts, David, “Kagel”, The Musical Times, vol. 120, no. 1631 (January 1979), 60 Rose, Bernard (writer and director), Immortal Beloved [film] (Universal Pictures, 1994) Saper, Craig, “Fluxus as a laboratory”, The Fluxus Reader, ed. K. Friedman (Chichester: Academy Editions, 1998), 136-51 Schnebel, Dieter, Mauricio Kagel. Musik, Theater, Film (Ostfildern: DuMont, 1970) Schnebel, Dieter, Schulmusik (Mainz, Schott: 1975) Schnittke, Alfred, ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music’, A Schnittke Reader, ed. A. Ivashkin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) 87-90 Scott, Derek B., ‘Postmodernism and Music’, The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, ed. S. Sim (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), 134-46 Sim, Stuart, ed., The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism (London, New York: Routledge, 1998) Speyer, Edward, “The Philharmonic Society's Bust of Beethoven”, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, vol. 24, no. 129 (Dec., 1913), 164-70

Spitzer, Michael, Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven's Late Style (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2006)

Sterba, Editha and Sterba, Richard, Beethoven and his nephew. A psychoanalytic study of their relationship, translated by Willard R. Trask (London: Dennis Dobson, 1954)

Page 195: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

195

Stockhausen, Kurzwellen (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1969) Subotnik, Rose Rosengard, ‘How Could Chopin’s A-Major Prelude Be Deconstructed?’, Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 39-147 Tarr, Edward H., “Stockhausen, Karlheinz”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eds. S. Sadie, J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 24, 399-414 Thomas, Philip, “Determining the Indeterminate”, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 26, no. 6 (2007), 129-40 ---, “A Prescription for Action”, The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 77-98 Toop, Richard, “Expanding Horizons: The International Avant-garde, 1962–75,” in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 453–63 Ulmer, Greg, “The Object of Post-Criticism”, The Anti-Aesthetic, Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. H. Foster (New York: The New Press, 1998), 93-125 Warnaby, John, ‘Bach according to Kagel: St Bach Passion’, Tempo, no.156 (1986), 38–9 Watkins, Glenn, Pyramids at the Louvre: music, culture, and collage from Stravinsky to the postmodernists (London: Harvard University Press, 1994) Whittall, Arnold, Exploring twentieth-century music: tradition and innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Wood, David C. and Bernasconi, Robert, eds., Derrida and différance (Warwick: Parousia Press, 1985) Wood, Paul, Conceptual Art (London: Tate Publishing, 2002) Wörner, Karl, Stockhausen: Life and Work, translated by Bill Hopkins (London: Faber and Faber, 1973 Internet sources Cobussen, Marcel, Deconstruction in Music, http://www.cobussen.com/navbar/index.html Author unknown, The CD laser, http://www.marantzphilips.nl/The_cd_laser/ This article is no longer valid on the Philips website, but it can be found under the title Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony of greater importance than technology, on

Page 196: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

196

http://web.archive.org/web/20040909214952/http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/dossier/optrec/beethoven.html Kagel’s films Antithèse, Solo, Duo and Ludwig van are available, among others, on http://www.ubu.com/film/kagel.html Discography Kagel, Mauricio, Aus Deutschland, Nederlands Kamerkoor, Schönberg Ensemble, Reinbert de Leeuw, KTC 9000-DVD 12 (1997) ---, Ludwig van, A. Tharaud, P. Bernold, H. Joulain, F. Le Roux, M. Marder, J.-G. Queyras, R. van Spændonck, Chœur Rémusat, Aeon, CD 0311 (2003)

Page 197: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

197

Appendix I

Programme notes for May 2009 realisation

PhD Upgrade Recital

Nikos Stavlas

Friday, the 22nd of May

Recital Room Goldsmiths College

Page 198: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

198

PROGRAMME

Ludwig van Beethoven

Elf Neue Bagatellen, op. 119 (1820-1822) Nikos Stavlas, piano

Mauricio Kagel

MM51, Ein Stück Filmmusik für Klavier (1976) Nikos Stavlas, piano

Mauricio Kagel

Ludwig van (1970) Barbara Barros and Erik Dippenaar, violins

Polly Hewett and Ben Havas, cello Kristin Sofroniou, melodica

Beatrix Graf, clarinet Michalis Angelakis, baritone

Andriana Minou and Nikos Stavlas, piano

Elf Neue Bagatellen, op. 119

Although it was François Couperin who was the first to name a piece Bagatelle, the term is mainly associated with Beethoven, whose three sets of Bagatellen, op.33, op.119 and op.126 are considered a very significant part of his work. The term actually means an unimportant thing, a trifle, and Beethoven seems to have considered them as exactly that, since he used to refer to them as Kleinigkeiten (trifles). However, regardless of their light character, they can be argued to be truly experimental and innovative piano pieces. The Eleven New Bagatelles, op.119, were composed between 1820 and 1822. It seems that Beethoven had problems trying to get them published: Peters rejected them, saying that “Beethoven should think it beneath his dignity to waste his time on such trifles, which anyone could write”. It can be argued that the first six are quite independent of each other, whereas the last five, which are also much shorter, belong together, as a smaller set within the set.

Nikos Stavlas

Page 199: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

199

MM 51 Rather as in Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a cinematographic scene, the theme of this piano piece is the threat of unspoken fears and dangers. But in contrast to Schoenberg’s orchestral composition, which is written in the autonomous musical language of expressionism, the present piece uses only stereotyped formulae, drawn from the kind of commercial music familiar to every viewer. Be deliberately rejecting a current “contemporary” style, I tried a different starting point for a problem that allows for contrasting solutions and realisations. Already with the first chords of the piece, the listener might recognize that repertoire of acoustic anecdotes which is readily dissociable from the illustration of moving pictures. But the relationship of this music with the representations of disturbing situations – which are only vaguely, rather than precisely, etched in the listener’s mind – permits a collage-like treatment of various music scenes. And thus, from dramatic situations of disparate origin, a particular, renovated mental image can be created.

Mauricio Kagel

Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven The first version of Kagel’s Ludwig van was a film with the subtitle Ein Bericht (A Report), made in 1969 as a commission from the German WDR in order to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. In it Beethoven is shown arriving in Bonn in 1969 to visit the house of his childhood, a fake Beethovenhaus constructed for the purposes of the film. In the music room of this house, all the surfaces are covered by pages of Beethoven’s music. It is from this room that the score Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (Homage by Beethoven) is derived: the score is nothing else than photographs of its surfaces. The result is a collage of different fragments of Beethoven’s work, or, rather, a meta-collage, as Kagel puts it. As for the performance instructions, the only unbreakable rule is that every single note used has to be by Beethoven; the way of combining the material is entirely up to the performers. They actually have to re-compose Beethoven’s music. Thus, the piece becomes actually “a contribution by Beethoven to contemporary music”, in Kagel’s own words. In Kagel’s recording of Ludwig van, the structure of the piece is derived from Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, op. 120. Following his example, and in order to avoid an unstructured succession of quotations, I based my realisation of the piece on the form of the Eleven New Bagatelles, op. 119. The result is eleven new New Bagatelles, in which the tonal material was composed by Beethoven, the overall idea was conceived by Kagel, the structure was conceived by myself, and the re-construction, re-composition and, finally, the realisation, were made by Andriana, Barbara, Beatrix, Ben, Erik, Kristin, Michalis, Polly and myself. Thus, one of Kagel’s main intentions, “the abolition of intellectual ownership” is accomplished.

Nikos Stavlas

Special thanks to Andriana, Barbara, Beatrix, Ben, Erik, Kristin, Michalis, Polly for their invaluable help in realising this project and to Keith Potter and Andrew Zolinsky for their support and guidance

Page 200: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

200

Appendix II Programme notes for June 2011 realisation

Page 201: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

201

PROGRAMME

Ludwig van Beethoven Rondo op.51 no.1 in C major (1796-1797)

Mauricio Kagel

Á deux mains (1995), Impromptu for piano Mauricio Kagel

Ragtime-Waltz, from Rrrrrrr… (1982) Mauricio Kagel

MM51, Ein Stück Filmmusik für Klavier (1976) INTERVAL Mauricio Kagel

Ludwig van (1970) Opening credits End credits Rage over a lost page-turner Ludwig in love Ludwig van Alberti Queentet Ludwig van Kagel Quarreltet Ludwig (a)van(t) garde I am not human yet

with Sophia Baltatzi, Beatrix Graf, Angelina Kartsaki, Andriana Minou, Maral Mohammadi Ludwig van Beethoven, texts Andriana Minou and Nikos Stavlas, text selection and collage AnnaMaria Pinaka, videos

Ludwig van Beethoven

Sonata op.109 (1820) - Vivace ma non troppo – Adagio espressivo - Prestissimo - Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo

Special thanks to Keith Potter and Andrew Zolinsky for their precious guidance, Kristin Sofroniou and Stella Parlavantza for their participation in the video shoot, Ella, Isobel, Jessica, Kate and Rosamund for lending their voices to Bettina, my friends and family for their invaluable help and support.

Page 202: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

202

Beethoven, Rondo op.51 no.1 in C major

Contrary to what the opus number suggests, this rondo was composed quite early in the composer’s life, along with his first set of piano sonatas (op.2). It is in five-part rondo form (ABACA), where both the episodes appear early within the piece, and the last appearance of the main theme is much longer and more adventurous than the previous two. The theme is a simple and delicate melody, marked dolce, which is somehow reminiscent of Mozart. The first episode is much more elaborate, moving from the quaver-rhythm of the theme to a continuous series of semiquavers and modulating to the key of G major. After a brief return of the theme the second episode is introduced in the dramatic key of C minor, developing the syncopated rhythm which already exists in the theme. The final recapitulation is delayed by an unexpected occurrence of the theme in A flat major and followed by a modulation to the distant key of D flat major and a small cadenza-like episode which leads to the final cadence. Kagel, Á deux mains, impromptu for piano (1995)

Perhaps my innate doubt whether the term “musical improvisation” ever can be realised in such a way that one in fact can speak of “improvised” music was also one reason to compose this piece. Apparently, my intellectual nonrelation to the pure doctrine of improvisation – if such a thing does indeed exist – often leads me to occupy myself with forms finding their legitimate perfection in the design of the musical impromptu. Thus, the impromptu is an example of that still living genre in which one tries to limit the arbitrary creation of music by onfining to a thematic model in order to make the same even more changeable and complex. The new forming of the moment in particular seems to me to be important because it can lead precisely to the emphasis of the unforeseen, to surprising modulations. The foil of spontaneity thus becomes more credible for the listener.

“Á deux mains”, a commissioned work for the Second International Umberto Micheli Piano Competition in Milan, was my first veritable morceau de concours. It is my wish that the pianists who perform this piece play it precisely and just as capriciously, extravagantly and just as glassily, as if this music would flow first at this moment, unexpectedly and presently through their fingers: in promptu.

Mauricio Kagel Kagel, Ragtime-Waltz from Rrrrrrr… (1982)

Rrrrrrr…, a “radio fantasy”, consists of 41 autonomous pieces for different instruments or ensembles, all of which begin with the letter R, and most of which refer to musical genres taken from a music dictionary. According to Kagel, “When I began to think about this work, I imagined d’Alembert hard at work on the enormous task of writing his encyclopedia, drooping with fatigue over the pages of his manuscript covered with articles that all began with the letter R. The exact meanings of his definitions would be blurred in his semi-slumber, in a rather anti-scientific way, which would lead to all sorts of combinations and associations from the most logical to the most eccentric. I had only to modify this idea a little in order to be able to hear my own knowledge – in Diderot’s sense of the word – and thus make the project possible. I replaced the general knowledge encyclopedia with a pocket music dictionary, and immediately found myself among infinitely multiplying fields, from rigorous semantics to the distant areas of musicology as a poetic art.”

Ragtime-Waltz, originally for organ, is a combination between the syncopated rhythm of the African- American ragtime genre and the triple meter of the European Waltz; as most ragtime pieces are in duple or quadruple meter, we would be tempted to

Page 203: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

203

think that it was Kagel’s idea to bring the two genres together; however, it seems that the ragtime waltz existed long before Kagel’s radio fantasy. This piece consists of an entirely tonal waltz-like left-hand accompaniment in the key of B minor and a highly chromatic and syncopated right-hand melody which does not seem to belong to any tonal centre and clashes with the left-hand chords in very interesting ways.

Kagel, MM51

Rather as in Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a cinematographic scene, the theme of this piano piece is the threat of unspoken fears and dangers. But in contrast to Schoenberg’s orchestral composition, which is written in the autonomous musical language of expressionism, the present piece uses only stereotyped formulae, drawn from the kind of commercial music familiar to every viewer. Be deliberately rejecting a current “contemporary” style, I tried a different starting point for a problem that allows for contrasting solutions and realisations.

Already with the first chords of the piece, the listener might recognize that repertoire of acoustic anecdotes which is readily dissociable from the illustration of moving pictures. But the relationship of this music with the representations of disturbing situations – which are only vaguely, rather than precisely, etched in the listener’s mind – permits a collage-like treatment of various music scenes. And thus, from dramatic situations of disparate origin, a particular, renovated mental image can be created.

Mauricio Kagel Kagel, Ludwig van

The first version of Kagel’s Ludwig van was a film with the subtitle Ein Bericht (A Report), made in 1969 as a commission from the German WDR in order to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. In it Beethoven is shown arriving in Bonn in 1969 to visit the house of his childhood, a fake Beethovenhaus constructed for the purposes of the film. In the music room of this house, all the surfaces are covered by pages of Beethoven’s music. It is from this room that the score Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (Homage by Beethoven) is derived: the score is nothing else than photographs of its surfaces. The result is a collage of different fragments of Beethoven’s work, or, rather, a meta-collage, as Kagel puts it. As for the performance instructions, the only unbreakable rule is that all the material used has to be by Beethoven; the way of combining this material is entirely up to the performers. They actually have to re-compose Beethoven’s music. Thus, the piece becomes actually “a contribution by Beethoven to contemporary music”, in Kagel’s own words.

For today’s realisation of Ludwig van I decided to include some quotations from Beethoven’s letters, apart from the quotations from his music. I believe this agrees with Kagel’s concept of Ludwig van for three reasons. The first is that Beethoven’s letters, like his music, are part of his output as an author, and therefore incorporating them into Ludwig van is not against Kagel’s instructions. The second is that it will add to a musical performance the theatrical element which is so common in Kagel’s work – Kagel himself has included a collage of Brahms’ letters in another of his canon-related works, Variationen ohne Fuge. The third reason is that Beethoven’s letters have contributed to a large extent to our perception of him and the myth around his personality, which is the main issue which is raised and parodied through the film Ludwig van; therefore, by including extracts of them into my realisation of the composition Ludwig van, I will be able to comment on the same issues that brought Ludwig van into being.

Page 204: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

204

Beethoven, Sonata op.109

Kagel’s concept of Ludwig van, apart from giving the performer the freedom to play Beethoven’s music in unconventional ways and to be creative with it, gives them, as well as the audience, another opportunity: to listen to Beethoven in different ways, to hear his music free from its cultural connotations and from the composer’s myth. I decided to end this recital with one of my favourite Beethoven works because I believe that both for me and for the audience it will be a different experience to go back to Beethoven after the adventure of Ludwig van.

The sonata is one of the last piano works of Beethoven, written in 1820 and dedicated to Maximiliane Brentano, daughter of his friend Antonie Brentano. Its overall form is very unusual, since the fastest movement is the second, while the final movement, which is also by far the longest, is an Andante with variations.

The first movement is in sonata form, but the two main subjects are not only different in character, but also in tempo and length: the first one is only eight bars long, in tempo Vivace ma non troppo, and consists of a simple sequence of broken chords, whereas the second is Adagio espressivo, comprising a very rich chordal harmony and cadenza-like arpeggios. After a very brief development section and the recapitulation, the two subjects are reconciled near the end of the movement in a chorale that combines the tempo of the first subject with the chordal texture of the second.

The Prestissimo follows directly, as Beethoven indicates that the pedal should be held down between the last chord of the first movement and the opening of the second. This is also in sonata form, although here there is very little contrast between the first and the second subject. The texture of this movement is largely polyphonic and its character is stormy and dramatic.

The last movement consists of a serene and cantabile theme in a sarabande-like rhythm and a set of six variations, all very diverse in character and tempo. The first one seems to foresee the romantic piano waltz; the second is a delicate and quite moto perpetuo; the third variation turns to a much faster duple meter and includes virtuosic runs for both hands; the fourth returns to a slower tempo and is scored for two to four voices with constant use of imitation; the fifth variation, an Allegro, ma non troppo is also very contrapuntal, although of a much more energetic character. Finally, the last variation starts with what sounds like a reoccurrence of the theme with a pedal note B repeated in crotchets; gradually the repetitions of this note become faster and faster, until it develops into a continuous trill, typical of Beethoven’s late piano works. The sonata ends with a tranquil and contemplative last appearance of the theme, almost unaltered. This movement, in the same way as tonight’s recital, returns to the familiar, but a familiar which sounds different after the transformations it has been through.

Page 205: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

205

Appendix III

Texts used in June 2011 realisation

ii. “End credits”

Angelina:

Send an answer soon, as soon as possible, very quickly, as quickly as possible, with utmost haste.

Sofi: I hope to hear good news from you very soon, not allegro time, but veloce prestissimo.

A: Answer me in English if you have happy news to give me, in French if the news is bad.

S: Now farewell my good fellow. I wish you open bowels and convenience. A: Adieu, Adieu, dearest; your last letter lay on my heart for a whole night, and

comforted me. S: Adieu, if the moon shines this evening as brightly as the sun in daytime, you will

see the smallest of small beings at your house. Great Heavens, how I love you! A: Farewell and continue to love your friend and brother. S: Fare right well; be glad that you are more fortunate than other poor mortals. A: Farewell – think of my dream and of myself. S: Farewell, and do not kiss your wife too often. A: Till then farewell, dear worthy Countess. S: Adieu, Baron Ba… A: ron S: ron A: nor S: orn A: rno S: onr Andriana: Adieu, Heaven watch over you Nikos: Adieu, the devil take you (simultaneously) Angelina & Sofi: In most hasty haste, S: Votre tres-obeissant Serviteur, A: Your Excellence’s great admirer, S: Your Imperial Highness’s most obedient, A: Your sincerest friend and deaf brother, S: Your faithful until death, A: Your worshipper, S: Your true father, A: Your friend, S: Your primus and ultimus, A: Your etc., S: etc., A: etc.,

Page 206: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

206

S: Louis von A: Ludwig van A&S: Beethoven Andriana & Nikos: Where are my blankets? (postscript spoken simultaneously after the end of the music)

iv. “Ludwig in love”

Angelina.-Sofi:

Ever mine... Ever thine…

Nikos: I have a migraine

fly to my arms again don't let my poor heart bleed it is only you I need

A.-S.: On the day that we met you made me forget you made me forget that till then i was dead

N: It is not that dreadful colic

that makes me melancholic I wouldn't mind my constipation if I had your consolation

A.-S. Day and night I cough and cough but don't let that put you off I don't think I would be deaf if you were my treble clef

vi. “Queentet”

Kings and princes can certainly create professors, privy councillors and titles, and hang on ribbons of various orders, but they cannot create great men, master-minds which tower above the rabble; this is beyond them. They are mad on Chinese porcelain, hence there is need for indulgence ; for intellect has lost the whip-hand. I don’t want to play to these silly folk, who never get over that mania, nor write at public cost any stupid stuff for princes. When two such as I and Goethe meet together, these grand gentlemen are forced to note what greatness, in such as we are, means. Yesterday on the way home we met the whole Imperial family. We saw them from afar approaching, and Goethe slipped away from me, and stood on one side. Say what I would, I could not induce him to advance another step, so I pushed my hat on my head, buttoned up my overcoat, and went, into the thickest of the crowd – princes and sycophants drew up in a line; Duke Rudolph took off my hat, after the Empress had first greeted me. Persons of rank know

Page 207: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

207

me. To my great amusement I saw the procession defile past Goethe. Hat in hand, he stood at the side, deeply bowing. viii. “Quar(rel)tet”

Andriana:

But, you do really love me a little, do you not? Nikos: I give you my word of honour. A: Mmm... I cannot tell you what ideas come to my head... N: But this must be better rehearsed. I cannot hear my music being murdered. A: But... love demands everything, and rightly so... N: My heart, as always, beats tenderly for you. But just now I cannot satisfy you... A: Oh infamous disgrace, is there not a spark of manhood in you? N: Please do not forget to address me as chief capellmeister. A: Alright. My very CHEAP capellmeister! N: (snob) I never answer insults. Emotion is only for women. A: Oh really? (pause) You are a big swine! N: (ironic and arrogant) Well, seems like the fair sex likes this... A: (angry) I like a tree more than a man. You should be exiled to Siberia! N: And you should be harpooned among the whales in the Northern Waters! A: (shocked) You stupid fool! N: You unparalleled fault! A: You ridiculous virtuoso! N: You utter failure! A: You ass! N: You dog! A: You pathétique! N: Aaa… The devil take you! A: The devil take YOU! (she slaps him and leaves angrily) x. Self-pity monologue

Great deal of misery. The weather is so divinely beautiful – and who knows whether it will be so tomorrow? It may rain tomorrow and perhaps heavily, or it may not, either is disadvantageous to me. On the 3rd floor of 1241 lives this poor, persecuted, despised Austrian musician. I am sick of this place, tired of it. Times are bad, our treasury is empty, our income low. …attacks of colic, a cough, worse pains in my head than I have ever had, impaired digestion… terrible cold, vomiting, constipation, I spit a good deal of blood, my stomach has become very weak… I have been unable to write a single note ... The primal cause of it is the state of my bowels. But my poverty compels me to write every day. I unfortunately can only live by my writing.

Page 208: Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van · The score, Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (1970), published by Universal Edition, is a collage of Beethoven’s works,

208

The noblest part of me, my sense of hearing, has become very weak. Yet it is not possible for me to say to men: speak louder, shout, for I am deaf. How can I declare the weakness of a sense which in me ought to be more acute than in others? At times I was on the point of putting an end to my life – art alone restrained my hand. Oh! It seemed as if I could not quit this earth until I had produced all I felt within me. Apollo and the muses will not yet hand me over to the Scythe Man, for I still owe them much; and before my departure to the Elysian Fields I must finish what the spirit suggests to me and commands me to finish. It is to me as if I had only written a few notes. So I continue this wretched life… For I may truly say that my life is a wretched one. I am compelled to live as an exile. I cannot love anything that is not beautiful – otherwise I should love myself. I cannot do it … although my name is still Beethoven. No other man could have accomplished the task as I have done and yet I feel in me a void which cannot be filled. Pity my fate. I am not human yet. I sometimes think I shall have a stroke of apoplexy. Yet there will be no necessity to have me put into the lunatics’ tower. I joyfully hasten to meet death. I shall soon be myself again Silentium. There is no other way.